- September 11, 2024
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It’s only natural after winning the most regular season games of any Florida Collegiate Summer League team — the most in franchise history — that the Winter Garden Squeeze would be widely recognized when award season came around.
That was certainly the case with a trio of Squeeze players taking home top Florida League honors and a total of 10 Squeeze players making the All-Florida League teams.
Catcher Tripp Landers was named the David Eckstein Sportsmanship Award winner; shortstop Titan Kamaka, a West Orange High alum, was named the Florida League Player of the Year; and Micah Takac was named the Pitcher of the Year.
“This is the most special group I’ve ever had,” Squeeze General Manager Adam Bates said. “It was emotionally hard to say goodbye to these kids. I will follow this bunch as much as any of the other groups that have come through here. They made a stamp on the community. And moving forward in their careers, I know we’ll see some of these guys do cool things at the next level, at the upper level of college.
“To me, the biggest testament to how special this year was is that some of these guys are already starting to ask about coming back next season,” Bates said.
The David Eckstein Sportsmanship Award is named after the Central Florida native and Seminole High alum — who played in MLB for 10 seasons and won two World Series (named World Series MVP in 2006) — and aims to recognize the league player who not only performs on the field and respects the game, umpires and opposition, but also shows high work ethic and moral character.
No player met that criteria quite like Landers in what was his last season as a baseball player; he’s retiring.
“Tripp came to me with about two weeks left in the season and said ‘Coach, I’m done,’” Winter Garden Squeeze coach Mike McDaniel said. “I told him that I don’t know if we could repay him for all he did, not just for us as a team, but also for the league.”
What McDaniel is referring to is probably one of the reasons Landers won this award. He led and organized a pregame prayer among not just his Squeeze teammates but whoever — from opposing players, coaches, umpires and even bat boys — wanted to join for a moment of reflection prior to first pitch.
“Tripp was the spiritual glue of this team,” Bates said. “He’s just a special person who lifts everybody around him up. I had something personal come up on our first Sunday of the season, and he just rallied around us. That’s the type of guy he is … and everybody in the league, from coaches to fellow players and umpires, just respects him so much.”
McDaniel credits not only his family for the type of person Landers has become but also notes the leadership that is required when playing the catcher position.
“He takes it upon himself to be the leader, and organizing the pregame prayers is just another example of his leadership skills,” McDaniel said. “He’s been a catcher his entire life, and that's a position that requires a lot from a leadership perspective, and that's just a carryover of who he is. He's a leader, he's an innovator, he's a guy that isn't afraid of putting himself out there because he's going to do what he feels is the right thing all the time.”
According to McDaniel — who coached Kamaka in high school at Olympia High — Kamaka’s success in baseball has a direct correlation to how much fun he’s having on the diamond.
Following a tough sophomore season in Tallahassee, the West Orange High graduate struggled to find that joy he had for the game. So, he entered the transfer portal and bypassed a trip to Omaha with FSU to come home and get to work.
“When he got here, I could tell he wasn’t enjoying baseball anymore, and I just told him, ‘Look, Titan, you and I have known each other since you were 10 years old, and when you’re successful it’s because you’re having fun and being vocal and being a teammate that people love to play with,” McDaniel said. “I’m going to allow you to do that this summer — succeed or fail. I don’t know what you’re going to do, but you’re going to play every day, and whatever you do with it is what you do with it.”
What Kamaka did with that buy-in McDaniel gave him was simply have one of the greatest hitting seasons the Florida League’s ever seen. He hit for an average of .376 and set a league record in slugging percentage (.651) — to go along with most hits, extra-base hits, doubles, runs batted in and runs created in the Florida League.
Those numbers earned him the 2024 Player of the Year award.
“Titan just played with his hair on fire all summer,” Bates said. “He was a very important part of … our core because he just got after every at-bat. He competed every at-bat. He didn't have any moment where he slumped this season because he only knows how to play at one speed and it absolutely showed.”
McDaniel agrees with Bates’ assessment of Kamaka’s season.
“I just go by what I see, and Titan led us most of the way this season,” McDaniel said. “The guy had a year for the ages, and from a Florida League point of view, he may have had one of the best seasons of all time.”
This fall, Kamaka will be heading to Macon, Georgia, joining his Squeeze teammate and roommate for the summer, Takac, as he has committed to continuing his college baseball career at Mercer University.
Call it what you want: Quiet confidence, swagger, control; whatever it is, the Macon, Georgia, native has it.
“Micah is kind of a silent assassin type,” Bates said. “He just carries himself with this confidence, and this summer he executed on the confidence. He knows he can pitch, and he went out there every time and showed it.”
In 29 innings pitched, the junior right-handed pitcher allowed just five earned runs, struck out 25 batters, walked just four batters and held the opposition to a batting average of .221. He also finished the season with a ridiculous ERA of 1.55.
Like his demeanor, Takac’s game isn’t about being over-the-top with his velocity. No, it’s much more cool and collected. It’s about staying under control and throwing strikes.
“From Day 1, he took the ball and just went out there and pitched,” McDaniel said. “He has such great command of the ball every time out, which is huge. And in a world that is driven by velocity — not to say he can’t get up there because he'll be around 87, 88 when he needs to be — he's a guy that could throw three different pitches for a strike whenever he wants. … He’s a guy that just knows how to pitch, and it’s almost like he was playing PlayStation out there, man, with the hitters.”
In his six starts this season for Winter Garden, Takac was the winning pitcher in five of those games. This is just the third time in the past five seasons a Florida League pitcher has recorded five wins in a season. His lone non-win start was ruled a no-decision for him after he gave up only one earned run in five innings of action.
Takac finished the season with no losses and became one of five pitchers in the past 10 Florida League seasons to win five or more games without recording a loss.
First team
Second team
