July 23, 2017 4:17 PM
The Mulvane Patriots have a perfect record in the National Baseball Congress World Series. Just add it to the list of things that didn’t exist a year ago.
The Patriots, playing as a first-year team in the upstart Sunflower League, won Saturday’s opener at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium 6-5 over the Fort Collins (Colo.) Bandits. Their first year has hardly come with growing pains. They won the Sunflower League and take a flawless NBC winning percentage into their Monday game at 7 p.m. against 316 Elite.
Board members Larry Gerwick, Kevin Cardwell and Tom Fagan were instrumental in the team’s commencement and in the hiring of manager Gus Strunk, who built a team that finished 27-8 in league play.
“They called me and presented the idea of maybe bringing a team down there,” Strunk said. “Larry Gerwick, his son Chad, coached the (El Dorado) Broncos, so he’s been around this summer baseball stuff for quite a while. He just kind of wanted to stay a part of it, so he got on board down there in Mulvane.”
