From the experiences to the results on the field, the Baldwinsville baseball team’s trip to the Disney Wide World of Sports Complex in Florida during the school break could not have gone better.
Not only did the Bees get a chance to meet up with its most famous alum, Jason Grilli, before he took over as closer of the Atlanta Braves, it also won all five games it played against foes from across the nation.
So B’ville returned home a tanned, confident group, and amid more warm sunshine last Monday afternoon, the Bees opened CNY Counties League play last Monday with a late offensive surge that turned back defending Section III Class AA champion Auburn in a 5-3 decision.
Cody Kaestle got the start, and other than a single run the Maroons scored in the top of the third, he kept Auburn off the board, waiting for his teammates to get going at the plate.
That happened in the bottom of the fifth, with B’ville erasing a 1-0 deficit with a trio of runs. And after Auburn tied it, 3-3, in the top of the sixth, the Bees answered by scoring twice in the bottom of the sixth, and watching reliever Nick Borek work the seventh inning for the save.
B’ville won despite getting just six hits, two of them by Anthony May. Tom Scarfino, David Marsell and Sam Mahar had one RBI apiece.
Without any rest, the Bees turned around Tuesday to face the newly-combined Syracuse squad, who had lost a tough 1-0 decision to Cicero-North Syracuse the day before, but had its highly-touted left-handed junior ace, Jeff Belge, on the mound.
Not fazed by any of this, the Bees beat Syracuse 2-1, making Belge pay for a wild streak that, in 4 2/3 innings, included seven walks to go with his seven strikeouts.
Thus, even though the Bees had just two hits off Belge, it poked across single runs in the second and third innings. In the second, Andrew Chajkowski walked, went to second on a sacrifice bunt, advanced to third on a wild pitch and, following another walk (to Niko Mirizio), Chajkowski raced home when Mirizio stole second.
Then, an inning later, Mirizio was on first again, but this time he was the one racing home when, with two out, Marsell’s single to right skipped into foul territory, allowing Mirizio, with a running start, to make it all the way to the plate.
Syracuse cut the deficit to one with a a run in the fourth, and Belge escaped bases-loaded trouble in that same frame. But Ben Webb allowed nothing more in his five-inning mound stint, holding Syracuse to two hits and striking out four, and Frank Mayosky threw two innings of no-hit relief to pick up a hard-earned save.
Back home on Saturday, B’ville faced Fayetteville-Manlius, and the 24-hour wait to dry the fields may have stolen some of the momentum from the Bees as it took its first blemish of the season, falling to the Hornets 5-3.
Cameron Morrissey started, but got into trouble, F-M tagging him for four runs. Three relievers took over from there, with Carson Hayes going four innings before smaller stints from Nick Borek and Billy Clifford, and all of them contained the Hornets well.
Yet B’ville could not catch up, still trailing, 5-1, when it struck for two runs in the bottom of the seventh off reliever Mitch Hoalcraft after Colin Green started. That left it to F-M reliever Taylor Smach to earn the final two outs as Chajkowski, Anthony May and Charles McAllister earned one RBI apiece.
B’ville gets another big test Monday, at Cicero-North Syracuse, before meeting Central Square Tuesday and visiting Rochester McQuaid on Saturday. On April 27, the Bees face Liverpool in the Strike Out Lou Gehrig’s Disease Baseball Classic at NBT Bank Stadium.
