Baseball: Making the Most of It

Stingers Baseball Ends Weekend by Winning Three Out of Four Games

SportsShane Wright — Published September 30, 2014

“We stole three out of four this weekend, and it just shows that we are still the team from last year [that made it to the national finals]. We are still going to be up there in the standing, and will be a hard team to beat come playoff time,” said Stingers infielder Anthony Marandola, who had three hits, two runs batted in, and scored one run on Sunday against McGill.

The Stingers came into Sunday with five players out due to injury, yet still struck fear into a McGill side whom they had already beaten last Tuesday 3-2.

“They are very nervous about us, and I like being in that position,” said manager Howie Schwartz. “I have a lot of confidence in us; it took us awhile to gel, but I’m not worried anymore.”

The Stingers played well and gave themselves a chance to take the first game, until the seventh inning when McGill’s centre fielder Adam Gordon hit a grand slam to left to give the Redmen the 6-2 advantage that turned out to be too much for the Stingers to come back from.

“The score was indicative of what the game was; it was a fine game, but we just made more mental mistakes than they did,” said Schwartz. “Physical mistakes hurt, mental mistakes kill.”

Concordia’s starting pitching was good enough to keep them in both games. In Game 1, Jonathan Raftus pitched six complete innings, allowing four earned runs, and striking out six. In their second game, Sam Belisle-Springer pitched a complete game, allowing four runs, with five strikeouts.

After allowing three runs in the first inning of the second game, Belisle-Springer settled down and took control of the game. With a strong defense behind him, the Stingers took a lead and gave the Redmen no hope of a comeback.

“I am very, very proud of the guys,” said Schwartz. “We were down 3-0 in the first, and the guys know I won’t play anyone with their heads down, so they all kept their heads up and showed a lot of maturity and got a ‘dig-deep’ type of win, and I’m very impressed with them.”

“Three runs is nothing to our team,” said Belisle-Springer. “I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. This team can score, and I knew that, I went back out there trusting my team and knowing they will get it done if they needed to.

After McGill starting pitcher Tim Jones got thrown out of the game in the fifth inning for throwing the ball over the head of Anthony Marandola twice, the Stingers took full advantage of the new pitchers and took control of the game in the fifth, adding four more runs.

“This was a big game, if we drop two to McGill, first place is going to get a lot harder to catch. With this win, we just sent a message that [Trudeau Park] is our park too, and we won’t get swept on it,” Belisle-Springer added.

With the Stingers a half game behind the McGill Redmen, they will try to keep their winning ways rolling, as they confront the Redmen on Oct. 2 at 7:30 p.m.