ROYERSFORD >> For six innings on Wednesday, Spring-Ford was gliding along at cruising altitude.
Then came the turbulence — sudden, bumpy and frightening, with the Rams rapidly losing control of their baseball bearings.
Then, just in the nick of time, with the tying run now somehow standing just 90 feet away, Spring-Ford landed safely in one piece, rattled but managing to escape Pope John Paul II’s campus with a breathless, white-knuckler of an 11-10 victory.
“Scary,” Rams right fielder Brennan McVey exhaled afterward. “We started off hot, and a win’s a win. Now we’ve just got to keep it going.”
The scare came via Pope John Paul II’s six-run bottom of the seventh that evaporated an 11-4 lead to begin the inning.
The Rams led 4-0 before PJP even picked up a bat, then gave runs back in the first and second innings to slice the lead in half. Spring-Ford then increased its lead to 6-2 in the fourth and 9-2 by the middle of the fifth. Anytime the Golden Panthers chipped away, their opponent added more, and for multiple innings a Spring-Ford rout seemed like a foregone conclusion.
As it turns out, PJP was just getting started.
Luca Dimaio brought the first run of the seventh home on an infield hit off Rams reliever Jackson Wowak with runners on the corners. Tyler Tindall popped out for the first out, and Carson Glose reached on an error by second baseman Aidan Dunleavy to bring home another run. A Chase Frantz sac fly then brought PJP to within 11-7.
With two outs, AJ Diaddezio blasted a home run to left center, and suddenly the scoreboard read 11-9. Luke Terlesky doubled, followed by a TJ Boccella walk that chased Wowak from the game in favor of reliever Jayson Ehrhart, whom McVey said hadn’t pitched all season.
Ehrhart walked Aidan Sgarra and Dylan Simeone, bringing home another run. But finally, with the bases loaded, Ehrhart got Dimaio to ground out to second to end the threat and deliver Spring-Ford (11-5 overall, 9-4 Pioneer Athletic Conference) a teeth-gnashing, heart-palpitating win.
“I’m glad we came back, we showed some fight,” PJP head coach Charles Deluzio said. “I’m proud of my guys for coming back, but we’ve got to play better baseball. For the first five or six innings, we played some embarrassing baseball.”
The Rams immediately jumped on Sgarra, PJP’s starting pitcher, who recorded just one out as Spring-Ford greeted him with four walks in the first five hitters to score the first run. Then came a two-run single off the bat of Logan Babore and another run-scoring single from Brett Wescott.
The Golden Panthers (13-3, 10-3) got runs back in both the first and second innings on a sacrifice fly and RBI grounder to slice the deficit in half, only for Spring-Ford to answer in the top of the third with a two-run single from Ryan Fields.
In the fifth, David Ruckman brought a run home with a sacrifice fly to make it 7-2. Jake Witmer walked and came around to score on a single by Ryan Cecconi, who raced to second on the throw to the plate that failed to cut down Witmer, then home because of a two-base error by Simeone in a chaotic sequence that Deluzio later quipped was like “Bad News Bears baseball.”
“I love our lineup,” said McVey, who went 2-for-3 with two RBI, two runs scored and a stolen base. “If I get on, I know the next guy is going to hit me in. We just keep it rolling and never stop.”
With Spring-Ford now leading 9-2, Dom Ruggiero, the team’s starting pitcher, had settled in. The junior righty allowed traffic on the base paths in the form of seven hits and five walks but mostly danced around the danger. He struck out six and yielded two earned runs in 4.2 innings, keeping hitters off balance with a mix of mostly fastballs and curveballs, with some changeups sprinkled in for good measure.
“Having that lead definitely helped,” Ruggiero said. “It let me mix my pitches up more and I was attacking with my fastball and curveball. I was able to throw whatever I wanted to, I felt like. This team fights. We get in bad situations, but we usually end up on top.”
PJP got within 9-3 on a Simeone RBI double in the fifth, but the Rams responded with two in the sixth, including a run-scoring single from McVey. The Golden Panthers got it to 11-4 on a Terlesky RBI single, followed by the ensuing mayhem.
There were some conflicting feelings from the Rams after the game, only because they nearly let a sure thing slip away. Head coach Rick Harrison breathed some fire in the postgame huddle in the name of accountability, but as McVey said earlier, a win is a win.
The win was Spring-Ford’s fourth consecutive, and all four of its PAC losses have been by two runs or fewer. Wednesday’s scary ending aside, the Rams appear to be rolling at just the right time, figuring out ways to close out games they would have lost a few weeks ago.
“I think even at the start of the year we were kind of right there, we just weren’t always getting the job done,” Ruggiero said. “We’re starting to get that extra push and we’re winning these types of games now. I think that’s something that’s going to keep carrying over into the playoffs.”
As for PJP, the fight back was admirable, and the team’s lineup has proven on multiple occasions this season that it is capable of rallying in the final at bat no matter how large the deficit. At the same time, the Golden Panthers did not play great baseball for much of the game leading up to the seventh inning. For a team with very high standards and expectations, the total effort wasn’t up to par for Deluzio.
That said, the Golden Panthers still sit in favorable position at the top of the PAC Frontier Division approaching the playoffs. Even if they lost Wednesday, they still ended the game with a bang.
“Now we can flush this out and not bring it to the field tomorrow,” Deluzio said. “Get back to playing our game and take care of business against Phoenixville.”
Spring-Ford also sits in a good spot near the top of the PAC Liberty standings, along with Owen J. Roberts and Methacton. If Wednesday’s finish is any indication, it could be a frenetic finish, but the Rams showed they are up for the challenge.
“The Rams are back,” McVey said. “We’ve got our mojo back. I love all of these guys. They just know how to come together and win baseball games.”
Spring-Ford 11, Pope John Paul II 10
Spring-Ford 4 0 2 3 0 2 0 – 11
Pope John Paul II 1 1 0 0 1 1 6 – 10
WP: Dom Ruggiero 4.2 IP, 7H, 3R (2ER), 5BB, 6K
LP: Aidan Sgarra 0.1 IP, 2H, 4ER, 4BB, 0K
2B: SF- Nick Flores; PJP- Chase Frantz, Carson Glose, Dylan Simeone, Luke Terlesky
HR: PJP- AJ Diaddezio
SB: SF- Brennan McVey, Brett Wescott, David Ruckman, Logan Babore, Nick Flores, Ryan Fields; PJP- AJ Diaddezio, Chase Frantz
