Today
Cardinals work out kinks
Enola, Mechanicsburg to play for Firecracker title today at 1 p.m.
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Article RatingFor a short time, it appeared the wheels were about to fall off the steamroller that doubles as Mechanicsburg’s baseball team.
The 22-inning scoreless streak was history, the team fell behind for the first time in the Firecracker Tournament and the errors continued to pile up.
In all, the Cardinals committed five errors — four in the second inning — and found themselves trailing Allegheny Valley, 3-0, heading to the bottom of the second inning Saturday afternoon at Memorial Park’s Shirley/Rickenbach Field.
Then the other shoe dropped. Allegheny Valley, from the greater Pittsburgh area, fell victim to two errors in the bottom half and the once sizeable margin was cut to one. Two innings later, Mechanicsburg didn’t need help from the visitors, pounding out four runs on three hits to take a 6-3 lead in a game it won, 6-4.
Now 4-0, the Cardinals entertain West Shore Twilight rival Enola, also 4-0, in a one-game, winner-take-all battle at Shirley/Rickenbach Field today at 1 p.m.
The game was originally scheduled for the last of the round robin portion of the event but the other four teams are mathematically eliminated. Cumberland, in third, is 2-2 and has lost to both Mechanicsburg and Enola.
“It should be interesting,” Mechanicsburg manager Bill Rickenbach said of today’s title tilt. “The fur will fly. Everyone knows the biggest rivalry around is us and Enola and it’s working right out the way we thought it would. I was hoping they’d drop one somewhere along the line but it didn’t happen. And I’m sure they were thinking the same thing.”
Enola rallied for a 6-2 win over Brooklyn, N.Y., Saturday morning and fought off Cumberland, 7-3, later in the day to run its record to 4-0.
“The way we look at it, if we get to 4-0, we cannot (miss) the championship game,” Enola manager Jim Blauvelt said after the win over Brooklyn. “We feel good about where we’re at right now.”
Mechanicsburg picked up right where its nemesis left off Saturday afternoon.
Playing under sunny skies for the first time in two days, the Cardinals knocked around Brooklyn starter Dan Munday in the first inning for a 2-0 lead. Mechanicsburg sent six batters to the plate, went up 1-0 on Dustin Kuhn’s RBI single and executed a double steal — Teed Wertz swiped second, Ryan Murray beat the throw home — for a 2-0 lead.
Lance Miller knocked in Colby Rickabaugh in the sixth to set the 3-0 final as winning pitcher Zach Whitman, a left-hander, recorded Mechanicsburg’s third shutout in as many Firecracker games thanks to six strikeouts and one walk in the complete-game, two-hitter.
Despite the loss, Munday, headed to Fordham University on a full baseball scholarship, was effective, ringing up seven strikeouts to five walks and scattering five hits.
“The kid that pitched for us today is a 17-year-old and I’m very, very proud of him,” said Brooklyn manger Joe Victor, whose team was loaded with 17- and 18-year-olds. “That being said, the guy who pitched today (Whitman) was tremendous. He kept us off balance, mixed his pitches up nicely. He hit his spots and when he had to be effective, he was effective.”
Only one batter, James Wong in the fourth, reached scoring position against Whitman, who sat down the final 11 batters he faced and retired eight straight after Kevin Laidlaw opened the game with a sharp single to right.
“His curveball was working, if he got behind in the count he was definitely battling back,” said first-year Cardinals catcher Mike Otstot, who splits time with veteran Ryan Melick. “His curveball was his best pitch today.
“He’s a good pitcher and threw well today.”
Unlike the Cardinals’ first game Saturday, and the two Friday, for that matter, Mechanicsburg failed to give its pitcher an early lead.
Allegheny Valley took a 3-2 lead into the fourth when the Mechanicsburg bats came alive. With one gone, Miller’s single started the rally before Murray was hit by a pitch and Kuhn walked. Arturo Figueroa popped out to third in between.
Rickabaugh followed with a two-out, two-run single to left and a 4-3 lead to set the stage for designated hitter Jamie Haas, who provided the winning margin via a two-run single to center for a 6-3 lead.
“It was a first-pitch fastball and I was looking for that. I swung at it and got the runs in, which turned out to be the difference in the game today,” Haas said. “We weren’t scared at all, we knew we were going to put up runs, we have a pretty stacked lineup this weekend, and I don’t think there was any concern about not being able to come back from that deficit.”
The outcome was what the Cardinals were looking for but the process didn’t go entirely to plan. In three previous tournament games, Mechanicsburg committed only one error and didn’t allow an earned run. That streak extended to 27 before Allegheny Valley scored an earned run in the seventh inning.
Despite it all, Mechanicsburg brushed its demons aside and took care of business Saturday to give Lee McClintock a shot to win his second straight Firecracker final over Enola.
Last year Mechanicsburg won, 2-0, in eight innings.
“I’ve had good pitchers in the past but I’ve never had a five-man staff that’s capable of going out and beating anybody, and these guys can,” Rickenbach said. “We’ve got McClintock for (Sunday) and he’s tough. I’d hate to come in and have to win a ball game and face McClintock, really. He’s had plenty of rest and will give us a good ball game, I know that.”
Enola 6, Brooklyn 2
Dodging raindrops early, Enola pitcher Cory Myers worked through control issues to help Enola down Brooklyn, 6-2.
Myers walked five, including three in the first inning, but limited the Cubs to two hits and two runs, one of which was unearned.
“He’s finding it, he just has to get confidence in what he’s doing,” Blauvelt said of Myers, a 2007 Carlisle graduate and member of the University of New Orleans baseball team. “His confidence factor, because he hasn’t thrown in awhile, is something that I think once he gets it ... he threw a couple nice breaking balls but he also threw a lot of them off the backstop.
“He’s working on some things but he’ll be just fine.”
Ken Mast knocked in two runs while teammates Ken Glass and Jordan McClure each went 2-for-3 to pace Enola.
