For a while in his second start of the season, Cicero-North Syracuse baseball pitcher Steven Theetge was facing the same situation with which he had little control over – namely, giving his team a superb performance on the mound, but not getting rewarded for it.
But Theetge’s Northstars teammates finally offered the junior left-hander ample support in the fifth and sixth innings of Thursday’s game at Liverpool, leading to a 7-0 victory over the previously unbeaten Warriors.
As these two neighbors and rivals clashed, Liverpool carried a 4-0 record, and had a solid right-hander of its own, Nick Claver, ready to go against Theetge, whose first start was a 1-0 defeat to Oswego a week earlier at Gillette Field.
All through the first four innings, Theetge and Claver kept it 0-0 in different manners. Theetge, mixing fastball and off-speed pitches, struck out seven and gave up just two hits, while Claver coaxed eight ground balls and only struck out one, limiting the Northstars to a lone infield hit.
What turned things around was the Warriors’ struggles on the defensive end, as three errors in the top of the fifth led to four runs that put C-NS in front for good.
One of those errors got Steve Kires on base with one out. After Kires stole second, Anthony Spataro got Liverpool’s first single that reached the outfield, which scored Spataro.
After a single and force play, Jesse Farabee, with runners on first and second and two out, hit a hard ground ball to third. Liverpool’s Jason Schulz had made two terrific plays prior to that point, but this liner glanced off Schulz’s glove, allowing a run to score. Then Justin Teague’s fly ball glanced off the glove of a diving Michael Wright in center field, bringing home two more runs.
Now up 4-0, the Northstars drove Claver from the game in the sixth with three more runs, two of them coming home on Spataro’s double. Mike Copani, called up from the JV ranks earlier in the week, added a run-scoring single.
Theetge didn’t need more than one run, though. Tossing with a complete-game three-hitter, he closed the game by striking out the side in the seventh, giving Theetge 12 strikeouts for the afternoon.
Liverpool had improved to 4-0 last Monday with a hard-fought 3-2 victory over Syracuse East in a game shortened to five innings by rain.
East, who beat C-NS 4-3 on April 12, quickly went out in front by scoring twice in the top of the first inning off Warrior starter Bobby Zywicki. From there, though, Zywicki shut the door, keeping Syracuse East off the board the rest of the way and holding them to two hits while striking out five.
Liverpool gradually got to Syracuse East ace Jeff Falge, as single runs in the first and third innings tied the game, 2-2. And it stayed that way until the fifth, when the Warriors put across what proved to be the winning-run as a heavy downpour ended things early.
Rick Sisto managed two of Liverpool’s four hits, one of them a double, and scored twice. Dan Vanherp walked and scored the other run as Don Pauldine managed a single and RBI and Luke Gilbert earned the other hit.
In stark contrast to Liverpool’s tension, C-NS wiped out Central Square 13-0. They managed to play six innings before the rain halted play, and other than the second, C-NS scored at least two runs in every frame, steadily gaining 11 hits in support of pitcher David Verrett, who threw a four-hit shutout and struck out seven.
Jake McArdell doubled twice, added a single and finished with three RBIs. Teague managed two hits and scored three runs as he, along with Farabee and Owen Dziados, had one RBI apiece. Farabee and Anthony Nesci each scored two runs.
C-NS and Liverpool will meet again May 7 at Gillette Field, but for now the Northstars look ahead to a tough week of games against West Genesee, Fayetteville-Manlius and Oswego while Liverpool flies down to Myrtle Beach, S.C., for a full slate of games during the school break.
