Emmaus repeats in a long, late-night classic
Green Hornets prevail 6-5 over Nazareth in 10 innings for a second straight league championship
In one of the most famous moments in baseball history, Babe Ruth called his shot in the 1932 World Series, allegedly pointing to the fence, then slugging a long home run against the Cubs.
Late Thursday night at DeSales University’s Weiland Park, Emmaus sophomore Noah Hogan called his own shot. And, like Ruth, he delivered.
However, instead of a Ruthian blast, Hogan hit a bouncer to the right side that Nazareth didn’t handle cleanly and Zach McEllroy
scored from third with two out in the bottom of the 10th inning to end a championship classic.
The Green Hornets’ 10th-inning tally provided an ending to a long and late 3-2 win that gave them their second straight Eastern Pennsylvania Conference crown.
This one will likely be more memorable than last year’s 4-1 win over Pleasant Valley at Nazareth for the 2021 EPC crown.
Had the Blue Eagles gotten the last out in the 10th, the game would have been suspended since it was 11:25 p.m. and the lights were set to go out at 11:30.
That didn’t happen, as DeSales baseball coach Tim Neiman was able to reset the timer and keep the lights on until midnight. But the game would have not continued to the 11th on Thursday because of a curfew, and league and DeSales officials would have had to come up with a day and time for a resumption and that wasn’t going to be easy.
Nazareth has its school prom on Friday night, which meant the game would have had to shift to either Saturday or Sunday.
Emmaus’ run in the 10th made solved the dilemma and silenced the discussion.
McEllroy began the inning with a single to left. Lefty Jacob Sauer, who had worked 3⅔ scoreless innings in relief of Nazareth ace Jake Dally, got the next two hitters — Anthony Viola and Josiah Williams — on popouts.
Colin Foley reached on an infield single on a little flare that landed and died on the infield grass near first base.
The count was 1-0 on Hogan when he got the bouncer that seemed routine, but wasn’t fielded cleanly. It was still a close play at first, but Hogan’s hustle produced a safe call and an Emmaus celebration that stretched into the outfield.
“Going into that [at-bat] I told Viola I was going to win the game and end it right there,” Hogan said
while standing on the third-base line after receiving his medal. “I’m still taking it all in. It was just an exceptional game.”
Hogan was 100% sure he was safe and wasn’t going to apologize for not hitting a line drive into the gap.
“I’ll take it. … it’s still a walk-off and I’ll take whatever I can get,” he said.
Emmaus (19-4) happily took home the trophy after trailing 3-0 and 4-1 and then failing to hold on to a 5-4 lead in the top of the seventh when Aaron Leopold ripped a two-out, RBI-triple to deep right.
From there, it was a matter of who would flinch first and neither team did through the rest of the seventh, eighth, and ninth.
“That was a high school baseball game with so many high-pressure situations,” Nazareth coach Bryan Wolf said. “I tip my cap to my guys and I tip my cap to them. At the end of the day, they made it happen. We had our chances, but I am not going to let that overshadow anything our guys did. They came out here and played their tails off.”
Nazareth (16-7) ended up with six errors that led to four unearned runs.
“That was uncharacteristic of our defense,” Wolf said. “We have played fundamentally sound defense all year long, averaging 1.5 errors per game, and to have
six tonight is tough, but it’s high school baseball. Our kids came out and gave it their best effort and I just love my guys. They gave us as a coaching staff and a community their best tonight. We just came up short.”
Emmaus coach Jeremy Haas said he wasn’t sure what was going to happen with the schedule if his team couldn’t push across a run in the 10th and is thankful he doesn’t have to worry about it.
“What a wild, crazy game,” Haas said. “Our guys are stubborn. They don’t want to lose. It’s a special group. They battle, they keep
grinding through ABs and they find a way. We had pitchers working their butts off and we made the plays defensively and every inning it seemed like the game was on the line.”
Haas said Nazareth was the hottest team in the area and Dally was the hottest pitcher. Being down by three runs twice wasn’t easy to overcome.
Nothing was routine for either side as the teams combined for 10 errors with seven of the 11 runs scored being unearned.
“It took some weird things to kind of go our way, but we had
some weird things, too, that went against us,” he said. “It was a bizarre game with a weird inning, but our guys found a way.”
Both teams will advance to the District 11 6A tournament and could meet again in the semifinals since Emmaus, the defending district champs, will be the No. 1 seed and Nazareth will be fourth.
The 6A quarterfinals are set for Wednesday at the home sites of the higher-seeded teams. Tentatively, the district semis are set for May 29 at DeSales, which is the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend with the finals on June 1, also.