Were it not for one nightmarish inning right at the end, the Bishop Ludden baseball team may have gone through the penultimate week of the regular season with five wins in five outings.
It all started when the Gaelic Knights handled Fowler 12-2 last Monday afternoon, breaking the game open with five runs in the fourth inning as pitching ace Ryan O’Kane earned 14 strikeouts in six innings of work, limiting the Falcons to three hits.
Chris Davis hit a solo home run, while James Murray managed four hits, four runs scored and two RBIs. Ciro Frontale added three hits, including a double, while Casey Ganley and Jared Taylor also earned RBIs and Fowler helped by committing nine errors.
In a rematch with Fowler 24 hours later, Ludden prevailed again 7-1 as Corey Hunter held the Falcons to three hits while earning eight strikeouts. Frontale earned three hits and Mike DePalma got two RBIs. Murray, Davis and Hunter each drove in one run.
Though Ludden expected a tougher test at East Syracuse-Minoa on Thursday afternoon, Murray, with his pitching, made things easier as the Gaelic Knights beat the Spartans 7-1.
All afternoon long, the Spartans met frustration as Murray limited them to three hits and three walks while striking out six. Meanwhile, Ludden pecked out single runs in the first three innings and used a three-run fourth to add further cushion.
Frontale had three of the Gaelic Knights’ 10 hits, including two doubles, and scored twice. DePalma drove in two runs as Murray, Davis, Taylor and Ganley each had one RBI.
This led to Saturday’s trip to the Gillette Road Middle School complex in Cicero for the John Ilacqua Jr. Memorial Tournament and a pair of tough tests against Class AA contenders Fayetteville-Manlius and Cicero-North Syracuse.
First, the Gaelic Knights flattened F-M 11-1, O’Kane winning for the second time as he held the Hornets to five hits. Ludden’s four first-inning runs set the tone as Davis and Murray each pounded out three hits, Davis earning two RBIs as
Murray scored four runs.
What followed, in a 17-13 defeat to CNS, was nothing short of bizarre.
Davis, with four hits (includinga home run), and Ganley each had three RBIs, and Murray drove in two runs as Ludden led 13-1 going into the bottom of the fifth inning, poised to give the Northstars its second loss of the day after it fell to F-M 6-4 in 10 innings.
But somehow, CNS made it all the way back. It awoke a bit with two runs in the fifth, but saved its real ammunition for a sixth inning where it went around the order twice and scored 14 runs, with Corey Burrows’ grand slam in the middle. Three pitchers – Frontale, Ganley and Corey Poplawski – tried to stop the onslaught without success.
And all this was a prelude to an eventful last week of the regular season, where Ludden was set to face fellow Class A contender Homer and, on Saturday, get its long-awaited chance at revenge against Westhill, nearly 12 months after the Warriors beat the Gaelic Knights in the Section III Class B final on its way to a second consecutive state title.
