O’Hara falls to resourceful La Salle in Catholic League baseball final

CHESTER — Whenever Cardinal O’Hara right-hander Bryan Pazulski recalls his starting pitching effort against La Salle Saturday, he will remember the corners hit, the strikeouts accumulated and the day-long pitching duel with Colin McVeigh.

Some day, he may even try to figure out how it happened that the Lions would fall, 4-1, then watched the Explorers celebrate winning the Catholic League baseball championship at Widener University.

Those baseball forensics won’t be easy to assemble.

“I thought I did my job,” Pazulski shrugged. “But, well, you can’t always have the best. Tip your hat to them.”

Pazulski did his job, McVeigh and La Salle reliever David Kratz more than did theirs, and the oddities of baseball decided the rest.

La Salle scored its first two runs on a suicide squeeze bunt and a sacrifice fly in the second, and its third on a hit-batsman, two stolen bases and a single through a drawn-in infield in the fifth. And though Dan Hopkins delivered Jim White with a deep seventh-inning double to left for O’Hara, La Salle would be just resourceful enough to defend its league championship.

Both the Lions and the Explorers will continue play Wednesday in District 12 championship games. La Salle will host Olney Charter for the Class 6A championship, while Esperanza will visit O’Hara for the 4A city title. Both games will begin at 4 p.m.

But as for the cherished Catholic League championship disc, the Explorers were glad to drag it back to Montgomery County, and in no mood to apologize for how that strangely that may have become possible.

“It was non-traditional, but I thought we found a way,” La Salle coach Kyle Werman said. “I thought we took 90 feet when we could get it, stole some bases, got a couple of bunts down. It’s not really how we scripted it this year, but we kind of knew in a game like this, we’d have to find a way.

“You look at the scoreboard and they out-hit us. We just got a couple of key hits when it mattered and got some breaks.”

Though Pazulski was sharp throughout, Justin Igoe touched him for a double down the first base line to open the second. A passed ball sent courtesy runner Thomas Meyer to third, where he would score on a squeeze bunt by Jake Whitlinger. Andrew Miles added a sacrifice fly RBI to center to plate Jack Heineman, who’d walked.

With the way McVeigh had gotten started and would continue, that already felt like enough. McVeigh struck out six and walked one in five innings, making good on his promise to Werman that he was the right pitcher for the moment.

“I came into practice yesterday and said, ‘Coach, I want the ball,’” said McVeigh, who started the Explorers’ 13-inning, semifinal triumph over Father Judge Wednesday. “He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I want the ball.’ He said, ‘OK, you’ve got it.’ So that was my mentality the whole time.”

O’Hara’s best chance to catch McVeigh came in the fourth when Joe Kelly raced to second for a leadoff pop double that dropped inches from the plate. Kelly reached third on an error and raced home on what appeared to some to be a passed ball. But after a consultation, the umpires accurately ruled that the pitch had hit Frank Parrotti.

O’Hara coach Rob Benedict questioned the ruling at some length, wondering how the first-base umpire was able to see the pitch that hit Parrotti from behind. The Lions would leave the bases loaded.

“Evidently,” Benedict said afterward, smiling, “I didn’t win.”

La Salle concocted two late tack-on runs. In the fifth, Miles was hit by a pitch, stole two bases, and scored on a sharp Owen Lawn single through a tight infield. In the sixth, Igoe slugged a leadoff double off Widener’s left field Blue Monster and scored on Jack Gannon’s pinch single.

For the final two innings, Werman pulled the left-handed-throwing Kratz in from center for a six-out save.

White had three hits for O’Hara, which out-hit La Salle, 8-7. Hopkins and Kelly added two hits apiece.

Igoe, with two doubles, and Whitlinger had two hits apiece for La Salle.

Next for the Lions: Out-of-league postseason opportunities to continue a satisfying season.

“I feel great about these guys,” Benedict said. “I love these guys. They are a phenomenal, phenomenal group of kids. The work very hard. They do everything we ask. And they’re fun.

“It was a fun game. And we enjoy it. Not today. But we’ll be back.”