North Allegheny and Mt. Lebanon got together Wednesday to square off for the WPIAL Class 6A baseball championship for the second year in a row.
And rather unbelievably, a talented David once again tossed a no-hitter to lead his team to a win.
Only it was the “other” David that stole the show this time around.
David Posey fired a no-hitter and No. 3-seeded North Allegheny scored the game’s only run on an unconventional home run to capture its ninth WPIAL championship courtesy of a 1-0 win against No. 1 and two-time defending champion Mt. Lebanon at Wild Things Park in Washington County.
“You can’t make it up,” Posey said. “That was probably the most wild game I’ve ever played.”
The championship was the second in four years for North Allegheny (17-6), which has two more titles than any other school. Mt. Lebanon (18-5), which had won 12 of its previous 13 games, had been trying to become the first team from the largest classification to win three consecutive championships since old Allegheny High School won six in a row from 1917-22.
Most of the talk coming into the game centered on Shields, Mt. Lebanon’s fabulous senior left-hander who is projected to be taken in the first few rounds of the upcoming Major League Baseball draft. Shields, a Miami recruit, threw a no-hitter to beat North Allegheny, 4-0, in the 2023 final. He was very good again Wednesday, giving up 1 run, 5 hits and 1 walk while fanning 11 in 7 innings, but the story in this game was Posey, a 6-foot-4 senior right-hander who will play at the Naval Academy.
“When we went to the facility today, I saw it in his eyes,” junior second baseman Mason Smith said. “He was ready. Nobody was hitting him today.”
Posey improved to 6-0 this season after a masterpiece that saw him strike out 11 and walk 2 across 7 innings. Posey retired the first 14 hitters he faced and wasn’t threatened until the later innings. Mt. Lebanon’s Nolan Smith reached on a two-base error with an out in the fifth and Shields and Graham Keen drew consecutive two-out walks in the sixth, but Posey escaped trouble on both occasions. Posey, who battled leg cramps late in the game, struck out Maddox Yost to close the no-hitter in what was his 100th pitch.
“David was outstanding,” North Allegheny coach Andrew Heck said. “He was really, really good. I was just hoping he could get through that last inning.”
Posey, who gave up only 1 hit and struck out 10 in six innings in a 3-0 win against Norwin in the quarterfinals, said he took it a little personal that Shields was getting all the attention going into the championship.
“A little bit,” he said. “Obviously, I know he’s going to get drafted. He’s a great kid. I played with him when I was younger. It’s just, my mindset is, as soon as I walk on the field I’m the best player out there. I’m the best pitcher out there. That’s what I rolled with today.”
North Allegheny used not a roll, but a bounce to vault to the win. The Tigers, who ended Shields’ no-hit bid via Miles Pealer’s infield single in the second, scored the only run of the game on a bizarre play in the top of the third. With two outs, Mason Smith, the team’s leadoff hitter, hit a ball deep to left field. Mt. Lebanon left fielder Sawyer Klasnick backpedaled before turning to his right and putting his glove up in hopes of catching the ball just in front of the warning track. But the ball appeared to hit off of Klasnick’s head and go over the fence for the first home run of his career.
Call it the “Immaculate Deflection.”
“I was like, ‘Did it go over?,'” Smith recalled. “I didn’t want to look like an idiot and sprint around the bases, but I didn’t want to look like an idiot and stop whenever it’s in the field of play. And then I saw the umpire do [the home run signal]. It was crazy.”
Added Posey, “I saw it off the bat. It landed straight on top of his head and then went over, and I was like, ‘That’s it.’ That’s all we needed. And then I was just going to get us the rest of the way there.”
Posey went on to do just that as he put the finishing touches on his championship no-no.
“He’s a good pitcher,” Mt. Lebanon coach Patt McCloskey said. “He throws hard with a good breaking ball. Every time it looked like he might be getting a little bit wild, he would just drop that curveball in. He threw some really good elevated fastballs. He threw a really good game.”
Brad is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at beverett@unionprogress.com.