The Four Horsemen

By Ryan Raicht

Junior outfielder Mason Satterfield stood on second base at a key moment for the Washington and Lee University baseball team a month into its season. Down by a run in the bottom of the seventh inning, the Generals needed the booming double that he’d just hit off the leftcenter field wall. His teammate, Luke Erdmann, came up to bat and dropped a bloop single into right field. Satterfield kicked it into high gear. After rounding third base, he barreled toward home plate.

The catcher for Shenandoah University blocked the lane, leaving Satterfield no choice but to lower his shoulder and plow into the Hornets catcher. The ball squirted away in the collision.

His nose bloodied, Satterfield popped up to his feet and grabbed his helmet off the ground before heading to the dugout.

Satterfield stayed in the game, which W&L came from behind to win, 6-5.

“To me, Mason showed that night that he can be the face of Washington and Lee baseball,” said W&L Head Coach Ted White.

Satterfield is one of four dynamic athletes on the team who graduated from James Madison High School in Vienna, Virginia. The other three are infielder Erdmann, outfielder Zach Perkins, and first-year pitcher

White said the four players know each other so well that they feed off each other’s energy.

“You can see it in adverse times,” he said. “It’s easy to grab a teammate that is a friend, like leaning on a brother.”

Blair said he thinks of his Madison teammates like they are his big brothers. “I look up to all three of them in different ways and I feel as though I can go to them for anything,” he said. “Knowing that they each have my back gives me the confidence to go out onto the field every day and compete to the best of my ability.”

The James Madison baseball team usually dominates their conference, and many of players wind up playing in college, or getting drafted by major league teams.

In 2020, the Warhawks ranked 18th in the country in a preseason poll by the National High School Baseball Coaches Association. James Madison’s James Triantos was the 56th overall pick by the Chicago Cubs in the 2021 draft.

In three seasons with W&L, Perkins, a junior, has .343 batting average, a .426 on-base percentage and a .552 slugging percentage. “Zach is a guy who puts his head down and comes to work every day with a positive attitude,” White said.

As a General, Erdmann has a .344 batting average, a .394 on-base percentage and a .405 slugging percentage.