Shen rallies to keep Cup
Curtis caps late comeback with walk-off hit in 7th
CLIFTON PARK — Why wait when you see exactly what you want? That is exactly the approach Shenendehowa third baseman Brad Curtis took during the bottom of the seventh inning Friday afternoon against arch rival Saratoga Springs.
With one out and runners on second and third, Saratoga Springs coach Andy Cuthbertson elected to intentionally walk Amaar Bhusri to set up a force play at every base. Richard Rossi came in to replace Charlie Greiner on the mound and Curtis launched Rossi’s first offering off the wall in left for a run-scoring single and a 2-1 Suburban Council victory over the Blue Streaks to maintain possession of the I-87 Cup trophy.
“My teammates set me up for a great opportunity and coaches prepared us phenomenally for the big moment,” Curtis said. “I am just so thankful that I could be in that big moment and execute.”
“We’ve been in nine games total and five have been one-run games,” Shenendehowa coach Greg Christodulu said. “There has been a lot of good baseball played and a lot of teams are equally balanced. You have to flush it and get on to the next game. That is really the bottom line. There is so much baseball ahead of us.”
Monday, Curtis crushed a walk-off home run in the eighth inning for a 4-3 triumph over Christian Brothers Academy and Wednesday, the Siena-bound standout was a tough-luck loser with seven innings of two-hit baseball where he did not allow an earned run in a 1-0 loss against Niskayuna.
Friday, Shenendehowa (7-2 overall, 6-1 league) trailed 1-0 entering the bottom of the fifth facing Northeastern-bound senior starter Michael Mack. The righthander, however, departed the game with two outs after suffer
ing an injury to his pitching elbow. Greiner recorded the final out of the inning.
“We aired on the side of caution. We don’t have any definitive results. We was going to the ER to start the process and get an X-ray,” Cuthbertson said.
“We don’t wish that upon anybody. Injuries are not what we want to have happen,” Curtis said. “The situation unfolded the way it did and we took advantage of every single angle and advantage we could get.”
Bhursi and Curtis each singled to open the bottom of the sixth and Shenendehowa eventually tied the game at 1-1 on a sacrifice fly from first baseman Ian Oehlschlaeger.
Shenendehowa senior
starter Ryan Ensel finished with a four-hitter. He limited the Blue Streaks (8-4, 5-3) to just one hit over the final four innings, a fifth-inning single by Jack Collier. That base hit was quickly made insignificant as Shenendehowa turned a 5-4-3 double play to quell the threat.
Christodulu was thrilled by what Ensel provided his team.
“Not only did him and (Blake) Mello have a great battery going today, but our defense was solid. We made plays and finished innings for our pitcher. That is why his pitch count was down as it was. It saved him a lot of pitches,” Christodulu said.
“My goal is to attack the zone and make our defense work. They made every single play without a single error,” Ensel said.
Mello got things going with one out in the bottom of
the seventh with a single to left and shortstop Peyton Marszalek followed with a double down the line in right. The walk to Bhusri set the stage for Curtis, who attacked
the only pitch he would see vs. Rossi.
“We had a lot of options. We could have suicide squeezed. We could have let him hit away,” Christodulu
said. “He’s got to throw strikes and Brad is our guy. He took advantage. Brad has been having real good at bats.”
“He is a dawg. His clutch
factor is insane,” Ensel said of Curtis. “Game after game, he is our best hitter. Every single game, he comes to play.”
“It was big to bounce back (from Wednesday’s loss),” Curtis said. “We worked our butts off all week. We worked very hard for this win and we are super happy about it.”
When asked to describe what a walk-off victory meant against the Blue Streaks, Ensel called it priceless. The two programs met in the first best-of-3 series to determine the 2023 Section II Class AA championship. Shenendehowa won the final two games last spring to claim the title.
“It is the I-87 Cup. That means a lot to us. It is a sectional rematch and a huge game,” Ensel said. “The energy was there from the start.”