Recap

Coming off of back-to-back wins in warm weather games, Township Varsity was looking to keep their winning streak rolling with the McCaskey Red Tornado coming to Westfield Insurance Park. Will Greiner got his first start for the Blue Streaks this season and had a rough opening with the first McCaskey batter hitting one off the scoreboard in left field to give the Red Tornado an early 1-0 lead. Greiner then settled down and retired the rest of the batters in the 1st and pitched a clean 1-2-3 2nd inning.

Township bats looked sleepy in the 1st inning before exploding in the bottom of the 2nd. On this windy afternoon, pop-flies were anything but routine plays. Colin Yablonski led off the inning with a fly ball into the wind that was misplayed by the 3rd baseman before Matthew Peipher walked to put two men on with no outs. Greiner helped his own cause on the mound with an RBI single that scored Yablonski from 3rd to tie the game 1-1. Colin Fitzgerald singled to score Peipher and advance Greiner before Drew Sassaman laid down his first of two bunt singles on the day to load the bases.

The Blue Streaks again extended their lead on a fielding error by the pitcher on a fielder’s choice off Brenden Moshos‘ bat. Two more runs crossed the plate on another McCaskey error to make it 5-1 MT with 2 outs. Ryan Jones stepped to the plate and picked up his first hit of the afternoon with a double to deep left field to plate the 6th run of the inning.

Working with a 6-1 lead, Greiner struggled to keep McCaskey runners off the bases as they struck for 5 runs of their own in the top of the 3rd to tie the game at 6-6. Fitzgerald replaced Greiner with no outs in the inning. As they did in the 2nd inning, Township put on another impressive offensive showing at the plate. A Greiner single, Fitzgerald walk, and Sassaman walk loaded the bases for Moshos. Moshos picked up an RBI walk that made it 7-6 Township. With 1 out, Jones knocked home two more runs on his 2nd hit of the day. Yablonski followed up with a double of his own and plated two more Blue Streaks to make it 11-6 before they were retired in the inning.

Fitzgerald, in his 2nd appearance this season, managed to sit down 6 of the next 7 McCaskey batters to preserve the big lead for Township going into the bottom of the 5th inning. MT extended their lead after back-to-back walks to Moshos and Ben DeMarco and a line-drive RBI single to center field off the bat of Jones. Yablonski picked up his 2nd double on the afternoon to make it 14-6 Township. Kyle Musser also got in on the action by hitting a fly ball to deep center that Yablonski could score on after tagging up. Township was up 15-6 after 5 innings.

After surrendering three runs in the top of the 6th, Fitzgerald kicked off the bottom of the inning with a double to center field. Sassaman reached 1st again on a bunt single before scoring on a Moshos triple that cleared the bases. Up 8 runs, Jones collected his final hit of the day and launched a game-ending 2-run homerun over the right field fence. The 10-run margin ended the game on the league mercy rule.

With the 19-9 victory, Varsity has now won 3 straight games and holds a 3-2 record on the season.