Brown County pours heart and soul into supporting its state-bound baseball team

MOUNT STERLING, Ill. — A slow drive down Main Street on Wednesday night — the way the posted speed limit intends it — allowed onlookers and gawkers to witness what community spirit truly is.

Outside Hagel 1891, a modern American cuisine restaurant located next to Dorothy’s Market in the historic Hagel building, had green and yellow balloons taped to its front windows. 

Across the street, in the window of the Brown County Public Health Department, cutouts of baseballs adorned with the name of each player on the history-making Brown County baseball team were plastered from top to bottom.

Green and white checkered flags hung from the light poles along the street, and a few of the supporters gathered on street corners waved similar flags.

An 8-year-old, bouncing around while his mother kept watch, finally stopped and stood still when he heard the sirens.

He pointed as a police car crested the street’s slope and screamed, “Here they come! Here come the boys!”

Indeed, the Hornets were coming, riding atop a fire engine and past a couple hundred people lining both sides of the main thoroughfare of the county seat.

Having beaten Carrollton 4-3 on Monday in the Class 1A Springfield Super-Sectional, the Brown County baseball team qualified for the state final four for the first time in program history. At 10 a.m. Friday at Dozer Park in Peoria, the Hornets (27-4) will face Ottawa Marquette (31-3) in the state semifinals.

The championship game is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Saturday.

No matter what takes place at the home of the Class A Peoria Chiefs, the Hornets will return home with the first state trophy in any sport in school history.

So there’s no pressure to perform, which should allow a team that has played loose all season to savor the moment, not shrink in it.

“Really, no pressure at all,” Brown County coach Jared Hoots said. “If you think about it, it’s crazy. You’re going to come home with a trophy no matter what you do. … We’re just going to go out there and play Brown County baseball and leave it out there and see what happens.”

They will have their hometown, home county and entire home area behind them.

That showed Wednesday night. The fire truck ride, which also served as a send-off, carried the Hornets through downtown in one direction, and then back the other. Everywhere they looked, people were wearing green, from the infants to the elderly.

It served as a reminder Brown County spirit is strong, maybe as strong as it has ever been.