Harlem Bulldogs baseball is different. Refreshingly different.
Different in a throwback sort of way.
You want to go to Maxpreps.com to find a team roster or to see the Bulldogs’ stat leaders, good luck. You won’t find it. It’s not out of negligence. It’s on purpose. If you reach out to someone on the coaching staff looking for statistical leaders, you won’t fair any better.
How do I know? Because I tried.
And assistant coach Hunter McBride was gracious with my request, but he also spoke the heart and sentiments of his head coach.
“Coach Lewis wants to leave it as team stats only,” McBride told me. And though coach McBride couldn’t see it, I smiled a bit out of respect for that.
In this rise of individualism even within the context of team sports, Lewis and company work hard to keep his baseball club shielded from what many have considered to be the norm.
No, seriously. He works really hard at it. You won’t see a Harlem Bulldogs baseball team page on social media. You’ll be hard pressed to find any of his individual players with much, if any, social media presence.
Forget stats and social media. If coach Lewis had his way, you wouldn’t even hear the individual names of his players being called out during the pregame announcement of starting lineups.
“We go to other fields and, after the national anthem, they tell us, ‘We’re gonna call your starters out,’” Lewis said. “And I say, nah. You can do whatever you want to do. But we’re going out there as a team.”
Why the hyper avoidance of individualism at Harlem? Because, according to Lewis, individuals don’t win baseball games, let alone state championships.
“Team wise, no one man can win a game by himself,” Lewis said. “No one man is a team. Like I’ve told my team before when Will (Holder) was sick, I told them, we don’t have Will. But we’re not a one-man team. We’re 29 strong.”
For Lewis, it’s anything but cliche. It’s definitely more than coachspeak.
Take for instance last year’s awards banquet that came after a 36-1 Harlem squad brought home the 2023 Class AAA state championship — its first in 37 years. Whereas most coaches use such settings to pass out individual awards like “most valuable player,” and “most improved player,” etc., Lewis opts against that.
Scratch that. He actually did pass out an award last year — but it was just one award 29 times over.
“I just don’t believe in individual stats,” Lewis said. “We don’t give individual awards at the banquet. We don’t do that crap. Last year, we gave most valuable player to all of ‘em. They’re all valuable. All 29. I told each guy, you’re the most valuable player we’ve got. Gave one to the water boy. Told that guy, you’re the most valuable water guy we had. Every time we need water, you had a bucket of water and it was there.
“We emphasize team all the way. That’s what won us a championship last year. We were a team.”
Even the temptation of nepotism couldn’t sway the old ball coach away from his “no-name” approach.
“I had for our five people on the bench last year who were almost as good as our starters,” Lewis said. “But they were pulling. Starters went down and they stepped in. My grandson was one of them. He did a helluva job as a backup.”
Anyone who knows coach Lewis isn’t the least bit surprised.
Four years before I was born, Jimmie Lewis began coaching baseball at Harlem. That’s 48 seasons at the same school coaching the same sport and doing it at a high level. It was a different time and era back then. Social media wasn’t even a thought. Player rankings, recruiting websites and the like were nowhere to be found. So it was easier to get the buy-in of players to embrace such an old school approach.
Much more difficult now in an era where some of the most hedonistic tendencies from professional sports have begun to trickle down into the amateur ranks. Everyone wants to be noticed. Everyone wants their highlight reel to go viral. It’s just kind of the way things are.
Not so much at Harlem, though. And while Lewis’ throwback way may not be the preference of other coaches or programs, it’s hard to argue with the results of it.
After Harlem’s Class AAA semifinals sweep of Oconee County Friday night that punched the Bulldogs’ ticket into a second straight state championship series, the pair of wins boosted Harlem’s overall record to 36-1 — identical to last year’s finish.
That means the Bulldogs have posted a ridiculous 72-2 mark over the last two seasons while dominating their opponents on the scoreboard in the process. Augusta-area sports journalist Ashley Brown, who’s been around the Augusta sports scene much longer than I have, referenced a crazy stat just before Friday night’s Game 2 clincher with Oconee.
Beyond the 72 wins in two seasons, Harlem has outscored opponents 624-102, including Friday’s results.
That’s mind-boggling dominance and consistency, which makes sense why Harlem has been situated atop local and national baseball rankings all season long.
But you won’t hear anyone from Lewis’s camp bragging about that — especially his players.
“I told them just like Nick Saban once said. All that national ranking and state ranking, it’s rat poisoning,” Lewis said. “I gave them this story right here. The rat comes up on the rat poison. He smells it, it smells good. He tastes it, it tastes real good. So he eats a butt-load of it and he walks around the corner and falls over dead.
“You listen to all this BS about national rankings, and you’re gonna go to another ball game, play another team and you’re gonna look at all them national rankings, and start smelling it and eating it and tasting it, and that other team’s gonna beat your [butt] and put you right out of the playoffs.”
Different indeed. But the great ones typically are. Lewis won his 800th game two seasons ago back in February 2022. He now sits at 896 career wins. In the upcoming best-2-of-3 state championship series, if Harlem wins the requisite two games needed for another state crown, it also puts Lewis right at 898 career wins which means he’ll be all but guaranteed to reach the 900 mark early next season.
The irony of it all is striking, though. The very thing that will make him a legend and a hall-of-famer is the exact same thing he does his best to ignore — stats. Wins. Numbers.
He won’t even give himself much credit for the program’s recent success.
“If anyone gets an MVP on this team, it’s probably going to be the assistant coaches,” he said. “Those guys are outstanding.”
Combine his mentality and coaching approach to his folksy, down home way of articulating his heart for his team, and it’s hard to root against him. Some may call it “out of style,” but winning never gets old. Especially when you’re winning the right way.
Call Lewis’ coaching ways and his program’s old school feel whatever you want as long as you call it successful. Because that’s exactly what Harlem baseball is.
Gabriel Stovall is the sports editor of the Augusta Press. He can be reached at Gabriel@theaugustapress.com.
