by Vinny Messana
You don’t need to tell Ithaca’s Hall of Fame Head Coach, George Valesente, in his 37th year at the helm for the Bombers, how baseball can be a crazy game.
Just one week after getting routed by Christopher Newport 17-2, it was the Bombers who were on the right side of a blowout, defeating St. Joseph’s 18-2 in the second game of today’s non-conference DH. They defeated them in the first game as well, by the score of 4-1–in a highly competitive and entertaining two hour and 19 minute game.
“We have not been hitting well,” said the skipper who has over 1,100 college coaching victories under his belt. “We played last week down in Virginia Beach and didn’t hit well at all. Actually, the first seven innings of the first game we sort of struggled and then we started getting some hits and broke through. Then it started to snowball.”
“This game is funny, sometimes you just find the holes,” he said.
Nick Girardi running out a fly ball (Photo Credit: Vinny Messana)
In the first game, that was not the case. They were held hitless by St. Joseph’s ace Nick Girardi for the first five innings. They did do a good job, however, of working the count to drive up his pitch count.
Girardi threw 85 pitches, the byproduct of walking six batters. His Head Coach, Richard Garrett, noted that they did push him another inning due to the no-hitter he had.
“He’s right on course to go for that magic number of 100 pitches that I like,” he said. “He had a good fastball, I thought he was a little too amped up, I think because of the extra rest, but he battled through it,” he said.
It appeared that the Golden Eagles had the game in hand. After Girardi was replaced by Josh Outsen, he breezed through the sixth inning with two strikeouts–both coming on deadly change ups.
The problem was that the Golden Eagles hadn’t recorded a hit to that point either. Anthony Bonilla smacked a double just inside the third base line with two outs. The next batter, James Nakashian kept the line moving with an infield single to shortstop. With runners on first and third, Girardi (now in as the DH), grounded out to first base unassisted to end the threat.
After another scoreless inning from Outsen, the Golden Eagles broke through with a run on an RBI double by Mike Griffo.
“He keeps on coming up with big hits,” said Garrett. “That’s two weeks in a row now,” he said.
It all came crashing down, though, in the eighth inning for St. Joseph’s.
“I think it was a lack of concentration,” said Garrett in regards to the Bombers eighth inning rally. After retiring the first two batters, Outsen allowed a bloop single.
“He had two strikes on the batter, and instead of putting him away he started nibbling,” said Garrettt.
He then hit a batter to put the go-ahead runner in scoring position. The cleanup hitter, Andrew Bailey, hit an RBI single to tie the game up. After a walk, Ryan Henchey bounced a single through the left side to give the Bombers a 3-1 lead, which they would not relinquish.
Ryan Contegni came on for the two inning save and shut the door with relative ease.
While that game came down to a two-out rally late in the game, the second game was over in the first inning when the Bombers scored two runs off starter Ryan Aloise in the top of the first and added one in the third, seven in the fifth, three in the sixth and five in the seventh to break it wide out.
“I don’t think we really had a plan at the plate,” said Garrett. “We were looking at too many 3-1 pitches that they’d like to pop, and that’s just not our baseball,” he added.
Aloise was tagged with his first loss of the season and the Golden Eagles dropped to 2-2, while the Bombers improved to 2-3.
The Golden Eagles will be back in action on Wednesday in a non-conference home matchup against John Jay, who defeated them 9-6 last season.
