I played baseball most of my young adult life. I’ve covered hundreds of baseball games the last six years.
Never have I seen a bottom of the seventh inning quite like the one I witnessed Friday afternoon at frigid, rainy and windy Lehman in The Bronx.
Let me paint the picture: DeWitt Clinton held a precarious, 5-4 lead as the Lions prepared for their final gasp. The skies darkened, rain began to fall, but nobody was going anywhere.
It was an eventful 6 ½ frames up to that point between two contenders, both undefeated up to this point, in the city’s elite borough. Clinton scratched out two runs in the first, Lehman responded with three in the second. The two pitchers – Tyler Gurman for Lehman and Jean Allende for Clinton – matched one another pitch for pitch until sophomore second baseman Hansel Reinoso – remember this name – touched up Gurman for a turf-aided three-run homer in the fifth.
That set the stage for the memorable seventh.
Clinton, bear in mind, had played a tremendous game in the field up to that point, turning possible infield hits into outs. Shortstop Melvin Mercedes gunned down Gurman at the plate in the fifth and made several other spectacular plays.
Yet, after reliever Kevin Hernandez walked pinch hitter Julio Velazquez to start the seventh, third baseman David Sanchez and Hernandez made errors on consecutive plays, Sanchez booting a two-hopper and Hernandez bobbling a bunt.
It loaded the bases for Gurman, Lehman’s power-hitting lefty third hitter. The first pitch he saw, a grooved belt-high fastball, he turned on, drilling it to deep right-center.
I thought the game was over. The Lehman bench thought the game was over. Gurman did, too, raising his right index finger to the sky as he rounded first. Even Clinton coach Dennis D’Alessandro felt the same way, telling me later all he could think of was the Lions dancing up and down at home plate.
The only person who didn’t give up was centerfielder Joaquin DeJesus, who is also the quarterback of the football team.
He raced back to the wall, somehow not slipping on the wet turf. He braced himself against the fence, climbed it, reached over the wall, and caught the ball with his outstretched glove, a play Gurman said he has only seen in the major leagues.
“Play of the year,” Hernandez told me later.
Dead silence. Then a roar from the pro-Lehman crowd. Shock from the home dugout. Lehman still had two outs to play with, its cleanup hitter, catcher Andy Ramos, at the plate, but you could feel the game turn on that one play.
Ramos, looking to be the hero now, got jammed on a fastball, muscling it just over Hernandez’s reach up the middle. Reinoso darted to it, flipped to Mercedes, who gunned down Ramos by a quarter step.
Clinton mobbed one another on the infield, ignoring the wind and the rain. Lehman walked around the field scratching their heads. As did I.
What happened?
Let’s summarize. A quarterback made like a wide receiver, robbing a sure grand slam. Than a sophomore second baseman, one who had struggled to adjust to varsity baseball, adds to the heroics, ranging up the middle, cleanly backhanding the ball before flipping to his sure-handed shortstop who delivered a game-ending fastball to first. These two clutch defensive gems after two inexcusable errors.
The win could have further implications, particularly for the Governors. It gives Clinton, undefeated at 4-0 atop Bronx A West with Monroe and Morris, confidence it can beat anybody. Confident in a big spot, with their backs against the wall, anything is possible.
Momentum is a funny thing in baseball. They often say it has to do with the next day’s pitcher. Friday, it was the next pitch.
