Stingers Trounce Defending Champions
Late McGill Rally Not Enough to Overcome ConU Thrashing
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The Stingers closed their third game with a sting at Trudeau Park with a 10-6 victory against the defending national champions, the McGill Redmen, on Sept. 6.
The Stingers stacked up a 3-0 lead in the first inning thanks to runs by second baseman Jason Katz, shortstop Marco Masciotra, and third baseman Mark Nadler. After Matthew Jacobson’s sharp pitching kept the opposition at bay, Stingers catcher Christian Jadah stole home in the second inning to put the Stingers up 4-0 early on.
A single by Redmen outfielder Steven Warch brought in fellow outfielder Robert Garven for the Redmen’s first run in the bottom of the third, quickly followed by a sacrifice hit by outfielder Chris Ames that brought in third baseman Alexandre Chouinard who had just stolen third due to a wild pitch by Jacobson.
The Redmen seemed to be gaining ground, closing the gap to a 4-3 Stingers lead by the bottom of the third, but the Redmen changed up their pitchers, replacing Daniel Kost-Stephenson with David Haberman in the top of the fourth.
Haberman allowed Jadah to get on base, followed by Marshall Johnston, who bunted and forced Redmen catcher Chris Haddad to throw a wild pitch to first. When the throw missed, Jadah was able to reach third, loading the bases for the Stingers.
After Haberman walked Masciotra to make it 5-3 Stingers, Mark Nadler was also walked, sending Johnston jogging across home plate with another run for the Stingers. The two walked-in runs forced yet another a pitching change by the Redmen, but the Stingers’ Marc-André Fleury proceeded to hit a single that saw two more Stingers cross the plate, widening to lead to 8-3 Stingers by the middle of the fourth.
After two more innings of back-and-forth, the score was 10-4 for Concordia. While a Redmen rally in the bottom of the seventh led to two more runs batted in, it was too little, too late, as the Stingers cruised to a 10-6 victory.
“We won six out of eight games against the Redmen last year, so we wanted to come out and show them that we could still play, and we did,” said Jadah.The Stingers’ General Manager Howard Schwartz admitted he was pleased with the beginning of the season.
“We have three games under our belt, and what I like is that [though] we got hit pretty hard with the loss of three pitchers at the start of the season, and that was a concern, […] the pitchers that we have gave us six and four innings before we pulled them out, and Jacobson tonight, […] pitched the whole seven against a tough team,” said Schwartz.
”There is always a rivalry between the Redmen and us, so I can’t be more pleased with how we played tonight, but hey! They are wearing the national championship ring, so you have to give them that,” he added.
“[I] can’t take anything away from the Stingers tonight,” said Redmen Coach Carey Ashton. ”Jacobson threw a great game. I didn’t think that they had that much going on in the bullpen, so I think that he did a really good job.”
“They had some timely hits,” he continued, “But we’ll see what happens when we play them twice on Saturday,”
When asked about the Redmen bullpen, he answered: “We have a lot of pitchers and we have quite a few games over the weekend, so we thought we would give everybody some work tonight. Our first pitcher, Daniel Kost-Stephenson, had seven strikeouts in three innings, so he did well. But we always have fun playing Concordia. We both entered the nationals last year; they were the division champs, we were the wild-cards, but we came out on top that year, and them the year before that, so it’s looking to be a good year again.”
Manager Joe McKenzie echoed his coach’s feelings about the upcoming double-header, which takes place at Trudeau Park on Sept. 10 at 12:00 p.m.
“We’ll be back,” he said.
