McNutt’s grand slam paves way for Central
By Jerome Boettcher
For the St. Louis American
Marvin McNutt will have a tough time topping his junior year.
The Hazelwood Central three-sport athlete has had a season that many seniors dream of.
During the football season, he took over as quarterback and helped lead the Hawks to the state championship game. He also played a significant role on the basketball team that made it to sectionals. And on Saturday his first career home run paved the way for the Hawks baseball team’s second trip to the state semifinals in three years.
“Marvin is a big game player in anything that kid does, I mean whether it’s football, basketball, baseball,” Hazelwood Central baseball coach Tim Williams said.
McNutt drove a 1-2 pitch out of the park Saturday at Hazelwood Central for a grand slam and put his team up by seven runs in their Class 4 quarterfinal against St. Louis University High. The Hawks would go onto win the game 11-1 in five innings.
“I was just waiting for that one pitch, to hit a line drive base hit, luckily it went over the fence for me this time,” McNutt said.
Teammate Jeremy Rahman was intentionally walked with the score 4-1 in the third inning to load the bases for McNutt and no one out. Rahman had been batting .441 prior to Saturday’s game, but had struck out earlier in the game.
“Jeremy’s one of, obviously, the quickest kids and has the potential to do what Marvin did, but the one thing we knew and (SLUH) didn’t is that Marvin’s been hitting the daylights out of the ball and been driving the ball better than anyone on our team,” Williams said.
McNutt said he just shook his head when he saw that SLUH decided to pitch to him instead of Rahman, who was on the receiving end of many of McNutt’s touchdown passes during football season.
“I had a feeling they were going to (walk Rahman),” he said. “So I was shaking my head ‘yeah.’”
McNutt went 2-for-3 on the day with four RBI as he broke open the game with his homer in the third. McNutt’s average now sits at .435. During the regular season of baseball, McNutt also participated in some area basketball leagues.
“When districts started, I’m committed to baseball right now,” McNutt said.
In football, McNutt threw for 1,239 yards and 12 touchdowns while he started just seven games at quarterback. In basketball he averaged 11.5 points per game for a team that made it to sectionals and lost to eventual state champions Vashon. He also was third on the team with 3.8 rebounds per game, 38 steals on the season and 2.1 assists per game. He led the team with 40 blocks on the season. Since McNutt had played partially during the baseball season, he only has 23 at bats on the season, with 10 hits and 10 RBI.
“(Next year) I’m just going to come out and try to work on all my weaknesses and my strengths, just get better as each day goes by,” McNutt said. I’m going to work harder over the summer in every sport.”
Some notable teammates of McNutt’s are Rahman who leads the team with home runs (2), RBI (27), runs (24), hits (30) and stolen bases (23). Teammate DeRon Putman also has 25 hits and 11 RBI. Pitcher Brandon Wings has a 1.40 ERA, a 2-0 record and three saves. All of them were key players on the Hawks’ football team that played in the Class 6 Show-Me Bowl in November, so winning big has become commonplace.
The Hawks (24-4) will play 8 p.m. Friday at Taylor Stadium on the campus of the University of Missouri-Columbia at in the Class 4 semifinals against Hillcrest (21-3).
