By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
Penfield head coach Nick Marcin thought during the fifth inning of his team’s scoreless clash with McQuaid that the game figured to end with a 1-0 final score.
Marcin didn’t think, couldn’t have thought, the lone run would score on a dropped third strike with two outs.
“That’s why you hustle,” Marcin remarked. “That’s why you don’t take anything for granted. It’s playoff baseball.”
McQuaid fielded the ball in the dirt with enough time to still nab Andrew Olson before he reached first base. The throw was off-target, however, and Olson arrived safely.
Thomas DiFranco, running on anything, scored from third. Dominick Porto was thrown out aggressively trying to score from second to end the inning, but the deadlock was broken.
VIEW MORE DENNIS JOYCE PHOTOS HERE.
Jack Josephson didn’t require any more run support, anyhow. Josephson scattered four hits and struck out 11 batters in the complete game shutout victory. Two years after losing to McQuaid in the Class AA final, Penfield avenged that defeat on Friday to get to the championship round.
The senior faced runners in scoring position in the second and third innings but calmly stranded McQuaid each time, with the help of first baseman Gage Ziehl’s fielder’s choice to third for a momentum-changing first out in the second frame. Josephson then tossed a dominant back half, retiring the last nine batters and striking out the side in the seventh.
Josephson threw 11 shutout innings in three appearances against McQuaid this season. The game plan for the semifinal, he explained, was to “basically keep them off balance, so fastball-curveball a lot.”
“And they couldn’t touch the curveball,” he added. “At all.”
“It shows you a lot about Jack’s ability to focus, and not panic, and execute pitches,” Marcin assessed. “… Great job by Jack of executing pitches and not getting rattled, and the defense doing its job behind him.”
Will Taylor was the hard-luck losing pitcher, going the distance himself and throwing a two-hitter. Ziehl’s line-drive single in the fourth ended a no-hit bid, while DiFranco’s infield single deflected off Taylor’s glove and caused a difficult, albeit close, throw to first. The only other Patriots to reach base were Porto, who walked, and Nate Sobko, who was awarded first on a catcher’s interference ruling.
“You kinda wondered if it was gonna take something like (the dropped third strike), the way both pitchers were throwing,” Marcin acknowledged.
“Only focusing on the person at the plate,” Josephson said of his ability to strand baserunners in a contest with little margin for error. “I have to look at them, because that’s baseball, but only focusing on the person at the plate. Because I know what I can do, so that’s that.”
The Patriots were in a celebratory mood after the victory but understood they still have a Tuesday’s game to prepare for, to win the tournament. After the loss in 2019, Penfield is setting out to win a brick this time.
“So proud of my boys for the way that they handled the situation, and we know the job is not done,” Marcin noted. “The goal was not to get to the finals. We’ve been there and we’ve lost it; we have no interest in just getting there again.
“We’re committed on the goal to win it, but we knew we had a tall task in front of us today and I’m just unbelievably proud of the way they played.”
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