Saint Joseph rallies to beat Mishawaka in eight-inning thriller
MISHAWAKA — Twenty-six runs. Twenty-five hits. Eight innings. Three hours.
That’s what the South Bend Saint Joseph and Mishawaka baseball teams combined for Friday.
And in a game that went so long, it was only fitting that what felt like the longest play of the contest decided it.
With two outs in the top of the eighth inning, Saint Joseph senior Jayce Lee hit a fly ball so high up that it seemed to defy the law of physics for a second. It went so far in the air, in fact, that Mishawaka shortstop Shawn Nowacki lost track of it at the last second, with the ball hitting the ground and allowing two Huskies players to score. The two runners — Ben Van Fleit and Joe Washburn — started on first and second base, respectively, when Lee first made contact. By the time the ball landed, Washburn had crossed home plate and Van Fleit was nearly to third base.
Those ended up being the final two tallies in an eventful 14-12 win for Saint Joseph over the Cavemen Friday at Ward Baker Park.
“There’s no one else I’d want up to bat in that situation,” Saint Joseph coach John Smolinski said. “He just missed it, to be honest, but he hit it so high that I knew we had a chance it was going to fall. It’s a tough situation there for that shortstop. One play doesn’t define that game for them.”
Lee also factored into the run that tied the game at 12 in the seventh inning. After leading off the frame with a double, the Notre Dame commit went to steal third base, with the ensuing throw getting by the Cavemen third basemen and into leftfield. This allowed Lee to trot home easily.
The bottom of the seventh saw Mishawaka senior Brayden Freitag get hit by a pitch to start the inning. Although the next two Cavemen hitters would record
outs, Freitag advanced to third base in the process. With the heart of the Mishawaka order up, Smolinski decided to intentionally walk Cooper Pritchett and Will Hartzke to load the bases.
The strategy worked out, as Huskies senior Brady O’Connell was able to get Mishawaka sophomore Kamden Putz to lineout to Saint Joe second baseman Brady Langager, ending the threat and forcing extras.
“He smoked that ball; we just happened to have a guy right there,” Smolinski said.
O’Connell wound up recording the win, pitching the final 3 1/3rd innings.
Back and forth game all night
After Saint Joseph (5-1) junior Owen Futa had a two-RBI double in the top of the first, Mishawaka (2-2) countered with a two-RBI triple from Hartzke in the bottom half of the frame.
The Cavemen went ahead, 3-2, in the second inning after a Huskie error allowed junior Izaiah Bute to score. Saint Joseph quickly wrestled the lead back by scoring two runs in the third and one more in the fourth.
Mishawaka tied the game in the bottom of the fourth when junior Shawn Nowacki ripped a triple to center, scoring Bute. Three pitches later, Nowacki scored on a wild pitch.
The fifth inning is where things officially became wild, as both teams scored six runs in a frame that went more than 40 minutes. A two-RBI double from Brady Langager, RBI single from Washburn and threeRBI double from Brett Mason provided the Huskies’ runs in the inning. Mason finished with a game-high four RBI in total.
The Cavemen countered by scoring its first two runs off Saint Joseph errors. Tyler Thomas’s sacrifice fly made it 11-8, a Nowacki triple two batters later cut the deficit to one and a DeBroka triple the ensuing at-bat tied it up at 11.
Nowacki wound up finishing 4-for-5 with three RBI. “Shawn is having a fantastic season to start,” Mishawaka coach John Huemmer said. “He’s a quality ball player. He’s going to be a hidden gem for a college team if somebody decides to get him.”
In a game with explosive offense all night, it looked like a bunt was going to be the difference for Mishawaka.
Bute laid down a perfect suicide squeeze in the bottom of the sixth, scoring Hartzke.
It wouldn’t hold up as the winning run, though, due to the efforts of Lee and the rest of his Saint Joseph teammates.
What do you learn from a game like Friday?
Smolinski came away impressed with his team’s resolve.
“We just don’t give up,” Smolinski said. “It’s not always the guy you expect to do it, too. Sometimes, it’s a person you maybe don’t expect to step up, like Brady O’Connell. The kid just competes, and that’s what I learned about our guys: we just compete.”
Huemmer knows the Cavemen will have to clean up some mistakes if they want to win games like this in the future. “We just have to do the little things,”
Huemmer said. “There were a couple things that we didn’t do well that kind of cost us. We had our opportunities to win, and I’m super proud of my boys for not giving up when we went down six runs. Saint Joseph is a pretty dang good team.”