Perhaps the only thing stranger than having to endure 14 innings to win a Section III Class B championship for the Skaneateles baseball team was claiming a state tournament game without a hit.
Yet that possibility presented itself in Saturday’s Class B regional final at Binghamton’s NYSEG Stadium, where the Lakers had a lead on Section IV champion Susquehanna Valley and no hits on the board.
The Sabers’ no-hit bid was thwarted – but SV still managed to catch and overtake Skaneateles, prevailing 4-1 and putting an end to the Lakers’ dreams of a first-ever state title.
Five days had given Skaneateles plenty of time to regroup from its epochal sectional final win over Westhill. It also gave pitching ace Cregg Scherrer the rest he needed to perform at a top level, which he did for a while against SV.
It would have helped, too, to give Scherrer an early lead, but it stranded a runner on third in the first inning as Tommy Reed’s potential go-ahead single was thwarted by a fine play from the Sabers’ Josh Rudock.
Through three innings, not only was it 0-0, but neither Scherrer nor his SV counterpart, Dominic Chesna, had surrendered a hit. And that remained true in the top of the fourth – but the Lakers still went in front.
Luke Viggiano reached base on a walk, moved over to second on Scherrer’s sacrifice bunt and then raced home on SV shortstop Logan Haskell’s throwing error off a Jimmy Liberatore ground ball. The Lakers were still hitless, but it had a 1-0 edge.
Scherrer retired 12 in a row before Zach Taro hit a hard shot that Reed dove to stop, but couldn’t keep Taro from an infield single.
Taro was moved over to second, and then Davin Hamm singled to center, bringing Taro home to tie it 1-1. Hamm moved to third and, with another runner on second, Rudock drilled a clutch two-run single to put the Sabers ahead for good.
Now it was the Lakers in danger of getting no-hit, but Scherrer changed that with a sixth-inning single. Jack Canty reached base, too, on a dropped fly ball by Hamm, and both were in scoring position when Reed, with a chance to tie it, grounded out to end the inning.
SV then tacked on a run in the bottom of the sixth and Chesna, in the seventh, Jack Carlile and Jack Whirtley walked with two out. Viggiano represented the potential tying run, but he flied out to end the game –and the Lakers’ season.
Despite drawing six walks and reaching three times on errors, Skaneateles watched as the Sabers advanced to next weekend’ s state final four, also in the Binghamton area, while the Lakers will see most of its starting lineup graduate after earning the second sectional title in program history.
