OJR baseball storms back with 4-spot in seventh to stun Spring-Ford on clutch hits by Taylor, Nau
ROYERSFORD >> Tyler Nau likened hitting to a parade. With just three hits through six innings on Monday night, Owen J. Roberts’ parade was kind of a dud.
Then, right when most spectators in attendance at Spring-Ford were planning their exit routes in the top of the seventh inning, the OJR hit parade suddenly started marching. Nine batters, four hits and four runs later, the Wildcats stunned the host Rams with an out-of-nowhere rally in an eventual 5-4 PAC Liberty baseball victory that extended OJR’s overall win streak to seven games.
It was Nau’s two-out, two-run opposite field single that turned the tide, with some help from shortstop Sam Taylor and the bottom third of the Wildcat order along the way.
“It’s a great group of guys, man,” said Nau, OJR’s starting catcher and cleanup hitter. “It’s a lot of fun. I think in most of our wins we’ve come from behind like that. We had the energy going in the dugout, and hitting is contagious. That’s all it is. Once one guy gets on, you just follow the parade.”
The Wildcats entered their final at bat trailing 4-1, and the previous six innings gave little indication that such a rally was on the horizon. Spring-Ford starter Ethan Freed limited OJR to one run and three hits in 5 2/3 innings, but five walks pushed up his pitch count and forced head coach Rick Harrison to remove Freed with two outs in the sixth.
OJR’s seven through nine hitters sparked the comeback, with Adam Stahl (2-for-3, 3B, 2 runs) and Jackson Waters greeting Rams reliever Logan Babore with singles. Lucas Zachesky walked to load the bases with nobody out, but Spring-Ford appeared to catch a break when Evan Sabatino hit into a 6-3 double play. A run scored, but also took the Wildcats down to their final out.
Nick Remo walked to extend the inning, and Taylor crushed a ball to left that momentarily left some confusion on whether or not it had cleared the fence for a game-tying home run. It did not, instead short-hopping the fence and bouncing over for a ground-rule double, forcing Remo — who had crossed the plate amidst the consternation — back to third base with OJR still down 4-3 with two outs.
“I have a lot of faith in this team, even when we’re down like that in the last inning,” Taylor said. “This win doesn’t even happen without those guys (seven through nine) doing their thing and getting on base. We always have a sense that it’s not over. So, I knew it wasn’t over even when my ball didn’t go over the fence. With a lineup this deep, stuff like that’s not going to matter.”
Two pitches later, Nau smacked an 0-1 pitch over the second baseman’s head, and elation erupted in the OJR (9-2 overall, 7-1 PAC, 5-0 PAC Liberty) dugout.
“We definitely still believed,” Nau said of the mood following Taylor’s hit. “We have full confidence that the next guy is going to keep the line going. That’s what happened. Remo gets on, Sam comes up and hits the ground-rule double/home run/whatever it was, and the parade’s got to keep going. I saw a curveball, sat on it and took it right over the second baseman’s head.”
Lucas Campbell, OJR’s fourth pitcher of the game, shut the door with a 1-2-3 seventh inning. Campbell recorded the final seven outs without allowing a hit to record the win.
For awhile, Spring-Ford (7-5, 5-4, 2-4) seemed poised to score payback on OJR for a 2-0 Wildcats win exactly two weeks earlier. OJR struck first on a sacrifice fly off the bat of Waters in the third inning following a leadoff Stahl triple.
Then, the Rams plated two in the home third on a two-run triple by catcher Ryan Cecconi, followed by a two-run double off the bat of David Ruckman the next inning to put Spring-Ford in front 4-1. The team had plenty of chances to put the Wildcats away thereafter but was unable to cash in, leaving double-digit runners on base throughout the course of the evening.
“That game wasn’t lost in the last inning,” Harrison said. “It was lost throughout the game. We had scoring opportunities in every inning but the last one, but left runners on base in scoring position with less than two outs. That’s where the game went. Give them credit, the bottom of their order came up and had quality at bats with two strikes, but we should have put them away earlier in the game.”
Babore took the loss for the Rams, yielding four runs on four hits in 1.1 innings, walking three and striking out one.
Dysen Neill got the start for OJR, going the first three innings. He allowed two runs on two hits, walking three and striking out two. Gavin Cinkowski surrendered two runs, a hit and two walks in 0.2 innings after Neill, followed by a scoreless inning from Luke Murray, setting the stage for Campbell to shut the door and the lineup to finally come alive after a six-inning slumber.
“It’s huge for us,” Taylor said. “We’re in the middle of the season now, so we want to get it going. We came in on a streak, and getting this win was huge to keep that going. To beat Spring-Ford twice in a year is awesome, and now we’re looking to go for more.”
As Nau pointed out, the Wildcats didn’t open too many eyes to open the season with a 2-2 start. Then on April 8, they beat the Rams 2-0 and have not lost since.
Something special is brewing, and after a night like this, the entire OJR team can feel it.
“We started off a little slow, but our win streak started with them and we didn’t want it to end with them,” Nau said. “It’s big to keep the streak going. We have a lot of momentum that we’re riding right now. This game is a big one to keep that momentum going, so let’s keep it going as long as we can. I don’t know … why not us?”
Nau paused, before repeating himself one more time, just for good measure.
“Why not us?”
Owen J. Roberts 5, Spring-Ford 4
Owen J. Roberts 0 0 1 0 0 0 4 – 5
Spring-Ford 0 0 2 2 0 0 0 – 4
WP: Lucas Campbell 2.1 IP, 0H, 0R, 0BB, 2K
LP: Logan Babore 1.1 IP, 4H, 4R, 3BB, 1K
2B: OJR- Sam Taylor; SF- David Ruckman, Nick Flores
3B: OJR- Adam Stahl; SF- Ryan Cecconi
SB: SF- Brett Wescott, Micah Seitzinger, Ryan Fields
