POLAND – Both sides were eager to play Tuesday’s St. Dom’s-Poland baseball game, not just for the potential to pick up the Heal points, but to get a chance to see where they stood heading into the post-season, which for both of them will probably begin a week from Thursday.
Poland got the points, scoring three runs on two squeeze plays with the bases loaded in the fifth to break a 2-2 tie and hand St. Dom’s its first loss of the season, 5-2.
“We will win however we can do it,” said Poland coach Dave Jordan, whose team was playing without one of its top hitters, Max Levine, who was attending a national debating competition in Wisconsin. “We have a lot of team speed and we really pay attention to detail. When it came down to it, I’m sure our guys were confident they could get the bat on the ball, but I really wanted to get a few more runs.”
“We didn’t execute small ball. That’s my only complaint to how we played today,” said Saints coach Bob Blackman.
The Saints had their opportunities offensively and defensively. They had two on and one out in the first, but a 6-4-3 double play squandered that threat. They stranded another runner in the second, left the bases loaded in the third, and stranded a pair in the fourth.
Poland starter Alex Smith (seven innings, six hits, seven strikeouts, four walks, two intentional) pitched himself out of every jam except the fifth, when he surrendered both Saints’ runs on a Brady Blackman RBI single and a well-executed squeeze play by John Emerson that scored Jon Rutt and tied the game at 2-2.
Smith was making his third straight start after back problems forced him to spend much of the season pitching in relief. Jordan wanted to see his ace challenged by one of the top hitting teams in Class C.
“He needed to have a little adversity in an outing, and I thought it was nice that today we had that,” Jordan said. “Other than the Gorham game (Poland’s only loss), when he wasn’t 100 percent, he’s really been able to sail along. We knew that St. Dom’s was going to put the bat on the ball and make him really be crafty out there.”
“It felt good to get stretched out there a little bit,” said Smith, who is 5-0 and was making his third straight start. “I struggled a little bit early on. I wasn’t able to hit my spots, but as they game went on I felt stronger.”
Saints starter Brady Blackman (five innings, seven hits, three Ks, one intentional walk) looked to be getting stronger after pitching his way out of trouble in the first. He’d retired eight straight before the Knights strung four consecutive singles together in the fourth, the last a seeing-eye dribbler up the middle by Stevie Ray, to take a 2-0 lead.
Joe Douglass (two hits) started the winning rally in the fifth with a single. Jeremy Callahan laid down a bunt to move him over, but was able to reach himself when Blackman bobbled the ball and couldn’t get the throw to first in time.
Blackman then intentionally walked Smith, the No. 3 hitter, to load the bases with nobody out. The move ended up backfiring because, after a strikeout, Curtis Haslip dropped a perfect squeeze bunt that led to an errant throw and scored Douglass and Callahan. Following a hit batter, Smith scored on a suicide squeeze laid down by Ray.
“Right now, (Smith) is the one guy that can beat you with one swing. Would I do it over again differently? Probably not, because I was prepared to give up a run,” Blackman said. “Ideally, we would have had one out, and if we’d have made a play on the first squeeze just to get an out, that makes two outs, and it’s a whole different inning.”
Regaining the lead seemed to perk up Smith, who went on to retire the Saints 1-2-3 in the final two innings.
The Knights finished the season 15-1, by far the best in the school’s history since it opened in 1999. They’ll either be a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the Western B playoffs, which means they’ll get a bye and home field in the quarterfinals, with a win there, the semifinals.
St. Dom’s is 13-1 and will be in a similar position, ranked in the top two with a bye and the potential for as many as two home games, in Western C.
“The last thing I wanted the boys to do was to put too much weight on this game,” Blackman said. “Going 14-0 was not our number one priority. Our number one priority was to see how we stack up against a good quality team with preparation for the playoffs and try to recognize any weaknesses that could come out.”
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