Once the Jamesville-DeWitt and Christian Brothers Academy baseball teams suffered back-to-back defeats to Camden in consecutive rounds of the Section III Class A double-elimination tournament, the quest for a title turned into a day-by-day battle for survival.
And given the nature of their rivalry, it only figured that the Red Rams and Brothers would end up facing each other Saturday at Onondaga Community College, where a late comeback allowed J-D, in eight innings, to emerge with a 2-1 victory.
The battles of the previous days had thinned both pitching staffs. Still, pitchers Josh Kowalczyk (for J-D) and Mike McCully (for CBA) got off to solid starts, keeping it 0-0 until the top of the third inning, when a wild pitch and throwing error by the Rams allowed Eric Little to score and put CBA in front.
Despite the 1-0 deficit, Kowalczyk did not allow a hit until the fourth, an eventful inning where the Brothers lost a run due to a J-D appeal on a runner leaving too soon on a sacrifice fly.
Then, in the bottom of the fourth, McCully had to leave the game when Gavin French singled off his ankle. C.J. Pankowski came in and, with two runners in scoring position, induced a groundout to keep his team in front.
Kowalczyk lasted until the sixth, when Casey Kretsch relieved him and made his own big escape from a bases-loaded jam. That gave J-D momentum, and helped by an error and passed ball, it got even in the bottom of the sixth when Scottie O’Bryan singled home Kretsch with two out.
They were still 1-1 going into extra frames. Then Matt Cappelletti stepped to the plate in the bottom of the eighth and led off with a triple. Pankowski faced Kretsch, but a pitch got away and went to the backstop, allowing Cappelletti to race home with the winning run.
Just 24 hours earlier, on that same OCC turf, CBA had kept itself in the tournament with a 2-0 shutout of Fulton, the same team it beat in the 2016 sectional final.
A tense, scoreless battle between the Brothers and Red Raiders was decided when Bryce Moore drilled a bases-loaded single in the top of the sixth, scoring both of CBA’s runs. Dom Spinoso then watched Fulton put the tying runs in scoring position in the seventh before recording back-to-back strikeouts to clinch the victory.
On that same day, Bishop Grimes, who had made it to the sectional Class B quarterfinals (still a single-elimination format), saw its playoff run end with a 5-0 defeat to no. 4 seed South Jefferson.
The no. 12 seed Cobras had edged Clinton and then gone on the road to beat no. 5 seed Holland Patent in the early rounds, but managed just three hits off Spartans pitcher Devon Noyes, who struck out 10 in 6 1/3 innings.
Shawn Gashi, who had one of those three hits (Matt Tarby and Matt Vonden Steinen had the others), pitched for Grimes and never let South Jefferson get a big inning. But the Spartans scored twice in the second and had single runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings to get away as Noyes tripled and Brett Lalone got two RBIs.
