Knowing that it was time to make a serious move, the Cazenovia baseball team did so in last Tuesday’s game against visiting Chittenango as the superb pitching of Burke Regan highlighted the Lakers’ 8-3 victory over the Bears.
Chittenango had just beaten defending Section III Class B champion Solvay 10-7 the day before, but Regan blunted that momentum as, in six innings of work, he blanked the Bears and held them to three hits.
Meanwhile, Cazenovia broke through in the bottom of the third inning against Chittenango starter Devon Spaulding, batting around and scoring five runs. Three more runs followed in the sixth against reliever Joe Mosack.
Evan Begley and Dylan Roy led the Lakers with two hits apiece. Regan, Anthony Vecchiarelil and Dan Hammond had one RBI apiece as Cazenovia took advantage of four Chittenango errors.
Only in the seventh, when Ben Nichols relieved Regan, did the Bears get on the board, scoring three times as Spaulding and Mike Culkin drove in two of those runs, but Nichols was able to get the final outs.
Though only owning a 2-7 record going that game against Solvay, Chittenango relied on its bats, especially that of Tom Rooney, to beat the Bearcats.
Solvay had beaten the Bears 8-2 on April 20. Less than two weeks later, Chittenango took a 4-1 lead with a three-run second inning and, after the Bearcats rallied to tie it, 5-5, the hosts used its own three-run rally in the bottom of the fifth to move in front for good.
Rooney notched three of the Bears’ 11 hits, amassing five RBIs. Tim Ryder also had three hits as Joe Mosack doubled and singled, with paulding, Jacob Burgan and Justin Makowski also driving in runs. In addition to his hitting heroics, Rooney pitched five innings and struck out six before Ryder worked the last two innings in relief.
All of the week’s other games fell victim to rain postponements, which lingered into this week and threatened to create a logjam with just two weeks left in the regular season.
