With a stunning late comeback, the Fayetteville-Manlius baseball team provided a jolt to its last week of regular-season work last Monday afternoon as it defeated West Genesee 5-4 in 10 innings.
This game had three distinct parts. It began as a standoff, with the Hornets falling behind 1-0 in the first inning but tying it an inning later, and then, over the next three innings, neither side could break the 1-1 deadlock as pitchers Christian Maloney (for F-M) and Brian Hartnett (for WG) had control.
Then, in the top of the sixth, the Wildcats knocked out Maloney during a three-run rally and went up, 4-1. Kyle Walters took over on the mound, and while he stopped the rally, it looked in vain as the Hornets still trailed by three going to the bottom of the seventh.
But then F-M came to life when pinch-hitter Kip Hellings drew a lead-off walk. Five straight singles followed, the last of them from Steve Laurie that drove home the tying run, though WG did keep the winning run from crossing the plate and forced extra innings.
Walters threw three more scoreless innings, and was finally rewarded in the bottom of the 10th when F-M loaded the bases and Mitch Seabury legged out an infield hit to bring the decisive run home.
That momentum carried over into the second game Tuesday in Camillus, where WG honored its seniors, but the Hornets, led by pitcher Peter Miller, spoiled the occasion and defeated the Wildcats 3-1.
For four innings, Miller and WG pitcher James Randall matched zeroes, but in the top of the fifth F-M grabbed a 3-0 lead, chasing Randall as Walters’ two-run single was the big blow and Aiden Jordan also had an RBI.
Kot singled and scored in the sixth, but that was all the Wildcats could get against Miller, who limited them to five hits and did not surrender a walk, inducing plenty of weak bat contact as he only got three strikeouts.
Before the series with West Genesee ended, F-M went to Syracuse last Wednesday and lost, 9-2, with Sommers surrendering eight runs in the first inning before he and John Egnaczyk pitched well the rest of the way.
Single runs in the fifth and seventh innings proved far from enough as Walters doubled, tripled and scored a run, with Steve Laurie and Isaac Blanford earning RBIs. Pat Burke, with three hits, and Adam Douglas, with two RBis, paced Syracuse.
Now, following a 24-hour weather postponement, F-M closed the series with West Genesee on Friday, and could not quite get the sweep, falling 6-3 as it could not overcome the five-run third inning the Wildcats used to get clear.
Four pitchers worked – Maloney, Walters, Egnaczyk and Tyler Powell, none of them lasting longer than two innings. Meanwhile, WG starter Marshall Winn blanked the Hornets until the fifth, when a belated push was made, Jacob Rhea and Jack Grifo getting credit for RBIs.
While all this was going on, the F-M softball team started its trek toward sectional play last Monday by hosting Cicero-North Syracuse and struggling to stop a potent Northstars attack in a 14-5 defeat. In the rematch a day later at the Gillette Road complex, the Hornets again lost to the Northstars, 12-7.
Yet when the sectional Class AA pairings came out, F-M was the no. 10 seed and C-NS the no. 7 seed, so a third meeting between them was imminent with the winner to face no. 2 seed Rome Free Academy in the quarterfinals.
As for the F-M baseball side, the no. 7 seed it drew in a nine-team Class AA bracket meant its own playoff match against C-NS, only it was in the quarterfinals and the Northstars came in as two-time defending sectional champions.
