The Ohio Warhawks, one of the best 18-and-under baseball teams in the nation for almost two decades, call The Nest home. Phillips lived in The Nest in 1998 when it was located in Enon. In 2000, it moved to North Street, near the site of the new hospital. With construction looming in 2007, it moved again to its current site on Sunset Avenue, just a long toss from Selma Avenue.
An All-Star team has passed through all the Nests. Players such as Phillips, Roy Halladay, J.D. Drew, Pat Burrell, A.J. Pierzynski, Brian Roberts, Colby Rasmus, Freddie Freeman and Aaron Hill have played for the Warhawks. In 20 years, 195 Warhawks have been drafted, and the team has won 11 national titles in various tournaments.
The Warhawks’ website lures many new players with quotes from alums who went on to make it big.
“I was out there in the middle of nowhere with no car and nothing to do but play baseball,” said Giants slugger Pat Burrell of his summer in Springfield. “There was no pressure. That summer probably had a bigger impact on me than anything I’ve done in baseball. After I had that kind of success, I knew I could succeed.”
This summer, three first-round draft picks spent some time at The Nest before signing contracts and reporting to the minors. That’s what head coach Ron Slusher had in mind all along when he founded the team.
“There’s nothing like this in the whole country,” he said, referring to the fact that most summer teams put their players up with host families for the summer. “We are, without a doubt, the winningest 18-and-under team in the country since 1990.”
All about the rout
Local stars such as North’s Nick Wagner and Kenton Ridge’s Derek Toadvine have played for the Warhawks, but it hasn’t been a truly local team since 1994. This year’s team, which is playing in The Finish Line 18-and-under National Championship in Indianapolis this weekend, has two Ohio State recruits, four players heading to the University of Memphis, one to Michigan, one to Nebraska and even two players from Canada.
The Warhawks expect to win big every time out. They routed a team from Lafayette, Ind., 11-0 at the Athletes in Action Complex in Xenia on July 15.
“What’s the goal today?” Slusher asked the players before the game.
“Run rule,” they said in unison.
“Why do we want to do that?” Slusher asked.
“So we can go to the Reds game,” the players said.
The Warhawks got the first game of the day done in a hurry, but they had to win even bigger in their second game if they were going to get to Cincinnati in time.
“Slush said if we end it in three innings, we can go to the Reds game,” said catcher Aaron Gretz, an Ohio State recruit from Minnesota. “We’ve got to beat them by 15.”
“Very possible,” a teammate said.
They won that second game, but not by a run rule — a rare failure for the team. The former Warhawk Phillips, playing against another former Warhawk, the Cardinals’ Rasmus, beat St. Louis with a walk-off home run that night.
Instead of seeing the game, the team returned to The Nest, which Slusher decorates with trophies from the team’s many national championships. He claims to throw the second-place trophies in the river.
College pennants fill the walls downstairs, representing many of the colleges Warhawks players have attended. The painted names of the team’s first-round picks line the walls by the stairs, though so many players have been selected Slusher has run out of room.
There’s a batting cage and pitching mound in the backyard, a ping pong table and big screen TV in the basement and many bottles of Gatorade in the fridge — Slusher doesn’t let his players drink sugary sodas.
In the beginning
It all started in 1989 when Slusher was coaching a 16-and-under WBLY team.
“I thought to myself, if I’m going to do this for a long period of time and put all this time into it, I don’t want to become just another guy who helped local kids go far in baseball and that’s all there was to it,” Slusher said. “I wanted to be a guy who helped out a whole bunch of local kids, but then I wanted to get the best kids in the country or the world. I wanted to be known as a guy who helped kids get to the next level — not just college, but beyond college.”
Slusher discovered the secret to building such a program when he talked to a coach in Chillicothe, who advised him to register the team as a nonprofit organization and raise money through bingo. That’s what Slusher and his coaches have done ever since. Three times a week, 52 weeks a year, they run bingo games in Moraine, raising more than $150,000 every year to lease The Nest and pay for two vans and all the food and travel costs that come with running a team.
“We were the first baseball bingo 18-and-under team in the world,” Slusher said. “Nobody did it. Since then, there’s been a whole bunch of copycats. There’s a lot of bad bingos out there who do things wrong. We’ve been around for years, so we must be doing something right.”
The players don’t pay a dime to play for the Warriors, so the coaches — who include Warren Thomas, Harold Pool, Nate Pool, Steve Moses and assistant general manager/scout Delbert Slusher — aren’t working for them. Ron Slusher said he never wants to have to answer to an 18-year-old. He can send players home if they act up, and that happens every summer. Part of the draw for many players is the chance to leave home for the first time and experience a environment similar to college.
“If you have a son and drop him off here, you know for a fact when your son comes back at the end of the summer, he’s going to be a heck of a lot more mature than he was,” Slusher said. “This is a stepping stone on the way to the next level. Here they learn respect. If you give them something, the first thing out of their mouth better be, ‘Thank you, coach. Appreciate it.’ When they first come here, they’re not like that. A lot of them take things for granted. It’s a different world today because moms and dads spoil these kids like you wouldn’t believe.”
A big sacrifice
Gretz said there’s always something going on at The Nest, but they do get to see some of Springfield while they’re here.
“We go to Golden Corral every day,” he said. “We go to the Y every day. We go to the Fairfield Commons mall. We go to the movie theater. That’s basically it.”
Every Warhawk was the best player on his high school team, but Slusher doesn’t treat them like stars. At that game in Xenia, he gathered the team around between innings to complain about a lack of leadership with this year’s group. He asked the players how many of them were captains in high school. Almost all of them raised their hands.
Later, frustrated by a few scoreless innings, Slusher said, “You guys need to raise up your dresses and hit the ball with your purse or something.”
The Warhawks want to look good every game. Not all of them have committed to colleges. A few are underclassmen. Greg Beals, the Ohio State head coach and Kenton Ridge graduate, watched the game in Xenia, and there was a coach from Kansas State in the stands as well.
“I don’t think there’s a college coach in the country who’s not aware of (the Warhawks) and familiar with some of the players they’ve had come through the program,” Beals said.
Slusher said the coaches know it’s a privilege to coach the type of talent they bring to Springfield. That’s why they put in so much time at bingo.
“It takes a big sacrifice to do what we do,” Slusher said. “Regardless of holidays, weddings, we do bingo. If you’re sick, you get your butt to bingo. That’s what allows our coaches to be little boys.”
The reward comes years later when a player like Cardinals outfielder Rasmus, whose brothers Corey and Casey also played for the Warhawks, sees the coaches at a game in Cincinnati.
“You go yell at him,” Thomas said, “and he’ll turn around and smile.”
Phillips, even if he’s signing autographs for four rows of fans, will pause if he sees his old coach Slusher.
“He’ll see me, and he’s got that kid’s smile on his face,” Slusher said.
It probably isn’t as big as Slusher’s. The Nest is his house of dreams.
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