If you haven’t been paying attention to our Hartselle Tiger baseball team, you’re missing a big treat.

Not only is our local team in the state semifinals, but they are a pleasure to watch. And it makes it easy to write about them.

This team, like this year’s football team, doesn’t have any major prospects. In fact, only two of this year’s seniors have even signed an athletic scholarship. One of those was a football scholarship.

Still, this team has shown each week that it doesn’t take superstars to win championships.

The best case and point was the second-round series against Cullman. The Bearcats have several players that will play college and pro baseball. Bearcat junior pitcher Keegan Thompson could even go in the draft next season.

But that didn’t intimidate this team. In fact, they rose up to the challenge.

Tillman Landers matched Thompson pitch-for-pitch through six innings and kept Cullman’s hitters in check for most of the game.

It wasn’t just Landers who kept the game knotted at 1-1. The Tigers’ defense made several outstanding plays to rob Cullman of hits.

In a game that Cullman should have won easily because of its dominant pitching, Hartselle turned it into a game that could have gone either way.

That just proved that Hartselle could play with anyone in any given game. They have eight different pitchers, seven of which have pitched in the postseason. They have good hitters and they play good defense.

The hero is different almost every night.

It doesn’t matter whether you are the leadoff batter or the ninth batter. Everyone contributes.

And that’s the definition of a good team. Everyone does his job for the greater good. When that happens, there’s no limit to how good you can be.

Brent Maze is the managing editor of the Hartselle Enquirer.