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Longtime Lakewood baseball coach Walter “Spud” O’Neil enters the 2024 season on the cusp of history. Already a member of the Long Beach Century Club Hall of Fame, and already coaching on a field named in his honor, O’Neil starts 2024 with 945 wins, just one shy of San Diego coaching legend Sam Blalock. When the Lancers collect a pair of wins this year, it will put O’Neil at 947 career wins, good enough for second all-time in California prep baseball history (El Segundo’s John Steveneson is alone in first with 1,059 wins).
In typical Spud fashion, he scoffed when asked how he feels about approaching that history.
“You can put that John Yakel is my hero,” he said, referring to his longtime assistant who’s been a big part in running the Lancers’ program recently. “He’s kept everything together. He’s an ex-athletic director and head coach at St. Francis and his son played for us and he started coaching with us after that. He’s a very good baseball man and he’s been a big help.”
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O’Neil has been coaching at Lakewood since 1984 (after four seasons at Colton High) and his teams have been top shelf almost that entire time–he’s won his 945 games at a .741 clip over four decades, a preposterous stat. He’s also eager to get to 947 so he can stop talking and thinking about it.
“I never paid attention to that until the last couple years, and it was Keith Hansen in my ear giving me my totals,” he said. Hansen was O’Neil’s best friend since childhood and passed away suddenly last year. “Let’s get this over with.”
The Lancers haven’t won the Moore League title since 2017, with the five seasons since then the longest drought the program has had since the Moore League was founded in 1957. O’Neil and his players are confident that although they’re young, they’ve got a good chance to get the trophy back this season.
“I feel really confident about this team,” said senior first baseman Brandon Luna. “We’re a young team, but we play the right way, we play Lakewood baseball. We’ve been practicing and working hard every single day on the field and off the field and I feel like we have a good shot.”
O’Neil echoed those sentiments, and said he finally feels like his program has fully built itself back out post-COVID.
“We’re finally catching up and getting some good players on the lower levels again,” he said. “This year’s freshmen are very good. We’re coming back. The pitching can be very good, the defense is very good, we’re just trying to find our offense. We’re very young and it showed in the Fall. We’ve had some really good games and some games where we made mistakes that JV teams do.”
O’Neil said the strength of the Lancers this year is their junior pitching staff, with five guys in rotation, all of whom he feels have the talent to play in college. Joseph Dizon, Aiden DeStouet, Andrew Ochoa, Nathan Garcia, and Hunter Gershen are the “Fab Five” for the Lancers.
“They don’t have the experience yet but by league we expect them to and to take us forward,” said O’Neil.
Junior catcher Drake Merrill is the one holding that group together, and he’s a true Lakewood-type player.
“I call him the bulldog, he’s an old school kid, in a day and age where a lot of kids don’t want to hear it, he listens and tries things,” said O’Neil. “He’s getting better and better, he’ll be one of the better catchers in Southern California.”
Luna, sophomore Xavier Nunez at second, sophomore Nate Gallegos at short, and junior Anthony Zepeda at third round out a talented but young infield for the Lancers, with Gallegos and Nunez the two standouts on Lakewood’s champion freshman team last year. In the outfield they’ll feature Angelo Ortiz, Andrew Ochoa, and Andres Roman, with sophomore Tanner Miramontes and Noah Nunez also in rotation.
The Lancers have lost their first couple games of the season, but O’Neil pointed out his teams have always been better at the end of the year than at the beginning.
“Ask me these questions again at the end of the season,” he said with a laugh.
Lakewood Starting Lineup
P- Joseph Dizon, Jr. / Aiden DeStouet, Jr. / Andrew Ochoa, Jr.
C- Drake Merrill, Jr.
1B- Brandon Luna, Sr.
2B- Xavier Nunez, So.
3B- Anthony Zepeda, Jr.
SS- Nate Gallegos, Jr.
LF- Angelo Ortiz, Jr.
CF- Andrew Ochoa, Jr.
RF- Andres Roman, Sr.
