Lowell High School Baseball — City Connected
Janice “JJ’’ Conley. Ella Jordan and Riley Berg. Jack Schonherr and Anthony Serrano. Their stories are uniquely theirs and yet they’re ours, too: Each is a piece of our San Francisco. In these profiles, you’ll recognize the grit and resilience, the youthful hope and drive, that connect our city’s past and present, and us to one another.
The 2021 baseball season for San Francisco public high schools had been shortened to just four games, squeezed in at the tail end of the school year when COVID restrictions began to loosen. One game a week for four weeks. But the only one that mattered to the Lowell team was May 12 against Washington High.
“We all had our eyes on that game,’’ said senior team captain Jack Schonherr.
There had been no summer ball or fall ball, and for the second year in a row, there would be no official league champion. But in the minds of the Lowell boys, the face-off with Washington, their longtime rivals, would be their de facto championship game. The boys had been getting together around all year on their own, long before they knew they’d have these four precious games. They’d gather at West Sunset field in early evening. Some brought buckets of balls. Others brought bats. Most of the guys had known each other since before middle-school. They were tight, and no one needed a tribe around him more than Anthony Serrano.
His family fractured during his sophomore year when his parents went through a difficult divorce. Serrano helped out his now-single mother however he could, picking up his little brother at school or shopping for dinner. His grades suffered. Then COVID hit. And there every day were his teammates, lifting him up.
Finally in April, San Francisco Unified allowed official practices to begin. Lowell is in the Sunset District: No sun for weeks, sometimes months. Early morning practices meant fog so thick and air so cold players wore four layers of clothes and wished they had five, though no complained. “They just wanted to play and be around each other,’’ said their coach, Daryl Semien. “They approached every practice, every groundball like they were playing for the World Series.”
The big day arrived. Lowell and Washington fans lined the bleachers at Big Rec, a beloved neighborhood field in Golden Gate Park that nonetheless fell short of Oracle Park, where Lowell had won the league championship in 2019, dog-piling on the same hallowed grounds as Giants’ stars Buster Posey and Brandon Crawford.
Neither Lowell nor Washington scored in the first inning, or the second, third or fourth. In the fifth, Semien sent Schonherr in to pitch. No runs from either team in the fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth. Schonherr had yet to give up a hit.
Now to the ninth, each team holding fast.
Schonherr led off with a walk, Mark Zhu singled, and Michael Leung bunted them over to second and third.
And who comes up but Anthony Serrano.
On a 1–2 count, he smokes a fastball away for a single over second base, scoring Schonherr and Zhu.
Now, bottom of the ninth. Lowell with a 2–0 lead. Schonherr returns for his fifth inning of relief. Two ground balls and a fly ball later, Schonherr has thrown 71 pitches and given up no runs, no hits, and just a single walk. The game is over.
There is cheering but no dogpile. The Lowell players understood that the victory was personal, meaningful only to themselves. Lowell went on to win all four of its games and, as the only undefeated team, finished at the top of the standings. For the 12 seniors, high school baseball was over. Schonherr had thrown his last pitch. Serrano had taken his final swing.
“I’ve never been prouder of any group of players,’’ Semien said. “They’re city kids. They’re gritty. They stick together and do the work.’’
At West Sunset field a week or so after the season, the 12 seniors showed up with plastic bats and yellow plastic balls to play Blitzball, a game sort of like wiffleball. They snapped ridiculous curves and sinkers and crushed monster home runs, having a grand time. They looked like the kids they surely once were — that so many of us once were — playing out the dream of baseball in their backyards.
Later, Serrano thought about his four years at Lowell and his game-winning hit against Washington and the times at West Sunset when it was just the guys from the team playing ball. “Sometimes,’’ he said, “you get the dream.’’
