The name "Nick" and the words "walk off" were heard often tonight. Nick Swisher had a walk off single for the Yankees in the Bronx and Nick Mele had a 2 out, walk off, grand slam in Basking Ridge. Mele's blast capped off a remarkable Westfield comeback against a very tough Mount Olive team. Down 7-3 in their last at bat, each and every Westfield hitter battled at the plate against two hard throwing Mount Olive pitchers. More on the rally in a minute.
Mount Olive scored 3 in the 1st inning on back-to-back-to-back home runs by the 3-4-5 hitters. Mariano Varano then settled down and proceeded to shutdown the Mount Olive bats over the next 2 innings. Westfield got 1 run back in the bottom of the 1st on an RBI single by Vin Difilippo.
Mariano got help from Scott Tupper in the 3rd when Tupper came on in relief with 2 outs and 2 men on base. Tupper pitched cautiously to the Mount Olive clean up hitter and issued a walk and then he got Mount Olive's number 5 hitter to pop out to the mound for the last out, ending a bases loaded threat.
Mount Olive extended their lead to 5-1 in the 4th and they were threatening to score more, but Chris Boutsikaris came on to extinguish the threat. Westfield then put two runs on the board in their half of the 4th. Nick Mele hustled on a dropped 3rd strike to get to 1st and then Devin Anderson and Chris Rinaldi singled. Mele scored on Rinaldi's hit and then Anderson scored on Boutsikaris' RBI ground out to make it 5-3.
Mount Olive scored 2 more runs in the 5th to make it 7-3. Westfield came up in their final at bat facing one of Mount Olive's top pitchers. Liam Heinbokel started things off by battling for a walk. Hopper Murray followed with a single to put runners on 1st and 2nd and then Scott Tupper hit an RBI single to knock Heinbokel across and close the deficit to 7-4. Mount Olive then made a pitching change and brought in a tall, hard throwing right hander. He struck out two Westfield batters before Chris Varano battled and earned a walk to load the bases.
Mele then stepped to the plate with 2 outs and the bases loaded and representing the winning run. Nick swung aggressively threw 2 fastballs and then with an 0-2 count, he launched a high, hard fast ball to deep center field. The ball seemed to hang in there air for a while, but it finally cleared the fence and the Westfield faithful went into a frenzy.
Next up for Westfield is Summit on Saturday at 10AM in a Central Jersey Baseball League game. Westfield opens in the state tournament later in the day when they face Monroe in Wayne at 3PM.
No comments:
Post a Comment