As a fingernail moon retreated over Maple City Park Wednesday night, the Power lost its grip. Building one of New York Collegiate Baseball League’s all-time playoff upsets, the Bolts unwound in a 27-minute catastrophe of wild throws, bad calls and weary pitching. Hornell scored seven to win, 8-4.
Base Paths sees 40-50 high school and college games most springs. All them together haven’t produced as many improbable comebacks and goofy plays and scorekeeping as the summer of 2014.
Was this a fluke, or was there a method in this merry madness?
First, the big picture. Of the 23 games the Power won, it came from behind in 19. Seven other times it overcame early deficits and lost. Only four times did the Power win wire-to-wire. Two were shutouts, 1-0 and 3-0. Even in the final moments at Hornell, with ninth-inning batters lining into difficult outs, genuine optimism emerged loudly from the Power dugout. A local high school coach, sitting nearby, observed, “Whew, this team has no clue about how to quit.”
Now the single play that defined the season, July 3, Sal Maglie Stadium, Power down 2-3, two outs, Syracuse’s closer throwing seeds. Somehow a batter takes one off the shirt and goes to second. Overmatched nine-hole Jack Trotman, defending the dish like the Alamo, ticks tips into the rightfield seats, each a little closer to home as he plays catchup with the bazooka on the hill.
Suddenly he flips one over second. At third, manager Josh Rebandt waves the lumbering runner home hard enough to invoke Tommy John surgery. The throw beats him by a light year, but so far up the line that the Syracuse pitcher has to retrieve it, then throw to second, where Trotman is trying to advance, the ball sailing into right field.
It’s déjà vu all over again, Trotman, a catcher by trade, pounding home while the outfielders pursue another gapper. Power 4, Syracuse 3. Cue pandemonium.
Trotman had no prayer of catching up to this pitcher, Rebandt should have stop-signed the firstr runner and Trotman should have stayed put on first. Yet all these wrongs add up to the giant right of a victory no screenwriter would dare submit as plausible.
It comes down to a team that lives in the moment. Few if any scouts bird-dog the Power; there’s no one to impress with your baseball acumen. Unlike high school or college, there’s no coach who’ll mentally file away the reckless chance you took. The team isn’t undisciplined, just uninhibited.
Finally, there’s the faith factor. Base Paths, a card-carrying skeptic, appreciates that these young men believe in something, not that Somebody Up There likes them enough to influence the outcome, but that this small thing called a baseball game fits into some larger picture, win or lose, in which they are bound to contribute all they can. And they do. The summer of ’14 is testimony.
Signal back to Base Paths via pollyndoug@hotmail.com
Leave a Reply