Baseball team resumes league play after rout of Silver Lake
Written by Dave Palana
Wed, Apr 30, 2008 16:17
The team greats Justin DeAndrade at the plate after his three-run blast in the fifth inning to make it 10-2 Vikings.
Heading into the stretch of four straight non-league games over school vacation week, Vikings manager Pat Cronin said he was going to use the games as a gauge of how his team has gelled before they finish their season with 10 straight league games.
After the Vikings put the finishing touches on a 10-2 victory over Silver Lake to sweep the four non-league games, Cronin said the team has gotten better since their loss to Cohasset and is ready to get back into league play.
“We’re excited,” he said. “This is a good Silver Lake team, they’ve beaten some good clubs so I don’t know what to think, except that we’re certainly going to get better after a week of playing good teams.”
Things got off to a shaky start for the Vikings when starter John Jardin gave up a first inning home run and two straight hits to open the second making it 2-0 Lakers.
Jardin struggled early, but shut down the Lakers after the second inning by not allowing another run.
However, the Vikings erased the deficit in the bottom of the inning when Shane Murphy walked and Nick Harmer took a change-up over the fence in left-center for a two-run homer that tied the game.
“He hits the ball unlike any other kid I have ever seen,” Cronin said of Harmer, who got out on his front foot, but was still able to lift the ball over the wall. “He just got his left hand through it and that ball was way out of here. He is just so strong.”
The Vikings took the lead in the bottom of third when Justin scored from third on a wild pitch to Murphy with two outs in the inning. After Murphy walked to load the bases, Nick Clark singled to left on the first pitch he saw to score Brendan O’Brien and Greg Bagget and bounce the Silver Lake starter from the game.
As with Harmer’s homer, Clark was fooled by the off-speed pitch but was able to fight it off and get the hit.
“He’s a good baseball player,” Cronin siad. “He’s just another kid who works and wants to win, and he’s been a lot of fun to be around,” said Cronin.
The Vikings added two more in the fourth inning on RBIs by David Pierce and Greg Giguere and Justin DeAndrade put the finishing touches on the scoring in the fifth with a three-run shot over the left field wall.
“When you have that kind of power in the leadoff spot, it can pick your team up right away,” said Cronin.
Cronin added that the righty-lefty combination of DeAndrade and O’Brien gives the Vikings a lot of options at the top of the order now that both bats are coming around.
“With the lefty behind [DeAndrade], that hides the catcher when he wants to steal,” he said. And, as fast as DeAndrade is, O’Brien is the fastest kid on the field and he may be the fastest kid in the league. It’s a nice one-two punch.”
Nick Harmer was out in front of the offspeed pitch, but muscled out of the park to tie the game.
With the game well in hand, Cronin took Jardin out after the sixth inning to give sophomore Brian Sullivan his first varsity inning. After Jardin had a rocky outing against North Quincy in his last start, Cronin said the most impressive thing about the win against Silver Lake was how the junior bounced back.
“He threw a couple of bad pitches, but he came back and I thought he pitched a whale of a game,” Cronin said. “I’m just very proud of him.”
After being rained out against Mashpee on Tuesday, the Vikings resumed league play Thursday in Abington. While Cronin said he was excited about how his team performed over the vacation week, he said the team still has a lot of hard games yet to play.
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