Up until the very end, the way the Baldwinsville baseball team roared out of the gate in the 2016 season made all the waiting worthwhile.
Like every other high school baseball club in Central New York, the Bees welcomed the warm March temperatures and got in some outdoor practices. It also looked forward to a new schedule where it would engage in weekly three-game series against all of the other sides in the CNY Counties League.
But then the snow fell, and the entire opening series between B’ville and Fayetteville-Manlius from April 4-7 was postponed. The wait for drier field conditions also wiped out the first part of a three-game set against Auburn.
At last, though, it was time to take the field for the second of the Auburn games last Thursday afternoon, and the Bees, eager to try and reach the form that produced a state Class AA championship just three seasons ago, proved quite impressive in a 13-3 victory over the Maroons.
Auburn had defeated West Genesee 4-2 the day before, but B’ville took charge by batting around in the bottom of the second inning and earning five runs. Not content with that, the Bees added four runs in both the fourth and sixth innings, maintaining a shutout until the Maroons scored three times in the top of the sixth.
Cody Kaestle pitched five innings and held Auburn to one hit before Nate Valentine worked the last two innings of relief. At the plate, Billy Clifford doubled and drove in three runs, while David Cerqua had a pair of RBIs. Frankie Levanti, Keenan Nellis, Alex Robinson and Cam Williams had one RBI apiece/
The other two games in the Auburn series were both re-scheduled so that the Bees would get in its first contest against F-M on Friday afternoon. That turned out to be a high-scoring affair, but the Bees won again, topping the Hornets 10-8.
Again, B’ville started quickly, leading 5-0 before F-M got on the board in the second inning. Then it built a 10-4 margin by earning 15 hits, three of them by Clifford, who drove in four runs as Zach Bush scored three times, joining Anthony May and Dan Rabe in the RBI column.
Nick Borek pitched well in his four-inning stint, and while Clifford and Nate Johns faced some trouble on the relief side (especially during F-M’s four-run rally in the bottom of the seventh), they helped the Bees hang on.
When B’ville reunited with Auburn Saturday at Falcon Park, it again led late – but this time could not hold on in a 4-3 defeat to the Maroons.
Run-scoring hits by Levanti, May and Ryan Carson helped B’ville raced to a 3-0 second-inning edge. From there, though, Auburn pitchers Steve Bennett and Paul Clark blanked the Bees, holding them to just four hits while combining for seven strikeouts.
Cameron Morrissey saw a five-inning stint for B’ville and exited with a 3-1 lead, but the Maroons tied it by scoring twice in the sixth off reliever Cam Williams and then notching the winning run in the seventh against Jarrod Williams.
Now B’ville could look ahead to its three-game series with defending Section III Class AA champion Cicero-North Syracuse, who won two of three with West Genesee to open its season. The first and third games would be at home, with the second on Tuesday at the Gillette Road complex.
