Hopper Murray, Liam Heinbokel and the rest of the Westfield Blue Devils awoke early this morning to make their way to Berkeley Heights for an early morning Central Jersey Baseball League game. Murray and Heinbokel were especially sharp for the 8:15 AM start though and the duo combined to throw a 1 hit shutout. The pitchers split the innings evenly and they recorded 5 strikeouts between them.
The defense was strong behind the Westfield hurlers as well and two Blue Balls were awarded for great defensive plays. The 1st came in the 1st inning when Murray initiated the rare "1-6-3-2" double play. With runners on 1st and 2nd and no one out, Murray fielded a hard grounder back to the mound. He turned and fired a strike to shortstop Chris Rinaldi to record the force out at 2nd base and Rinaldi threw to Chris Boutsikaris at 1st but the runner was ruled to have beat the throw. The Berkeley Heights runner who started on 2nd did not stop at 3rd and headed for home. Boutsikaris alertly threw home to catcher Heinbokel who applied the tag at the plate to complete the double play. Heinbokel received a 2nd blue ball when from the mound he made a leaping stab of a pop up behind the mound which would have otherwise fallen in for a hit.
While the Westfield pitching and the defense were putting up zeroes across the frames, the Blue Devil bats started warming up in the middle innings and finished very strong. All 11 Westfield players in the line up had hits and Vin Difilippo (double and 3 RBIs), Michael Mobarakai (triple) Murray and Boutsikaris each had 2 hits. Heinbokel came within inches of hitting an inside the park home run when he launched a drive to deep center field which cleared the outfielder's head. He then raced around the bases and towards home, but he was ruled out at the plate on a very close play.
Next up for Westfield is Basking Ridge tonight at 7:00 PM in the semi-finals of the Basking Ridge tournament.
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