Saturday,
May 31, 2014
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Ramsey junior Pat Mullane watching his first inning home run leave the park and set the tone for the Rams'
7-1 win over Lenape Valley in the North 1, Group 2 state sectional final on Friday. |
RAMSEY – Playoff baseball, especially in a game where a state sectional championship trophy would be awarded to the winner, is supposed to be played in intense circumstances with every minute part of the game of the utmost importance. Moving runners up with sacrifice bunts, getting them in with clutch base hits late in counts and using small ball to pressure the opponent are all elements that usually come in to play.
Or a team could simply bludgeon the opposition into submission with a baseball bat. That is what Ramsey has done in its run to through the North 1, Group 2 state sectional tournament what it did to Lenape Valley in the final on Friday afternoon.
Pat Mullane pulled a one-out, two-run homer well over the rightfield fence in the bottom of the first inning to give the Rams the lead for good. Matt Butler added a two-run shot of his own in the bottom of the fourth and four of top-seeded Ramsey's seven hits were of the extra-bases variety as it won its first state sectional title since 2010 with a 7-1 win over Lenape Valley, which was seeking its first sectional championship since 1978.
“In both of our last two state tournament games against Mountain Lakes and Kinnelon five of our six hits were for extra bases. We are hitting the ball with some power, which is nice,” said Ramsey head coach Bill Chesney. “We won a title in 2010 and we have been back here a couple of times since, we just haven't been able to finish it off. Today, the kids played great and they wanted it. You could tell by their attitude that they really wanted this one.”
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Tyler Rogers reached on an error with two outs in the fourth and scored Lenape Valley's lone run. |
They got it by grabbing the early lead and then riding the left arm of sophomore Thomas Feehan, a sophomore who had won two previous tournament games in a relief role. This time he took the ball from the start and did not give it back until he went the distance on a three-hitter. Feehan struck out eight, walked two and did not allow an earned run. He got in real trouble just once and worked out of it with minimal damage using a fastball with zip and a knuckle curve that got better as the game went on.
“I was confident coming in because I was pitching with a great team behind me. Having already pitched in the relief in the tournament helped me get the butterflies out of the way and I was ready to go today,” said Feehan, who retired 9 of the final 10 batters he faced and the last seven in a row. “I had high expectations for myself this season, but I can stand here and tell you that I ever thought I would throw a complete game to win a title. This feels great.”
It was Mullane's blast that set the tone. Coming up right after Rob Sartori drew a one-out walk, Mullane's blast was a no-doubter off of Lenape Valley starter Dan Rafferty (4+ IP, 6 R, 6 ER, 6 H, 3 K, 2 BB).
“That was a great feeling because we knew Thomas [Feehan] was going to pitch great and our job was just to get him some run support. Getting those two early was important,” said Mullane, Ramsey's junior first baseman. “It was good to get out early, but we also knew that Lenape Valley had to be a good team to make it this far as we had to keep tacking on runs or else they could come back and anything could have happened in a close game.
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Ramsey sophomore Thomas Feehan went the distance on a 3-hitter and did not allow an earned run as he picked up his third win of the state tournament. |
To Rafferty's credit, he settled in. He struck out the final two Ramsey hitters in the first and faced the minimum in the second and third innings to give the Patriots a chance to get back in it, which they almost did in the top of the fourth.
Feehan (6-2) struck out the first two batters of the frame, but an error on a groundball hit by Tyler Rogers kept the inning alive. Feehan then temporarily lost the strike zone as he walked Rafferty and hit Robert Sparacino with a pitch to load the bases and Jim Fluke then drew a walk to push a run across as Lenape Valley (18-6) drew to within 2-1. If there was a white-knuckle moment for Feehan it was when he faced Nick Sabatini with the bases still loaded, but the got a called strike three to end the inning with Ramsey's lead still in tact.
And then the ball started whizzing around the park. Ashton Bardzell smoked a triple to right-center with one out in the bottom of the fifth and Butler then sat on a hanging curve ball and hit it where hanging curveballs often end up.
“Ashton had just tripled so with one out and a man on third I was just trying to get a flyball deep enough to score him. The first pitch I saw was a fastball and I fouled it off and then I was kind of expecting a curveball because I took two in my first at bat. So I just sat curveball and got all of it,” said Butler, the No. 5 hitter in a lineup that has scored a combined 20 runs in its last three tournament games. “Our bats have gotten hot just at the right time in the season. We didn't score a lot of runs during the season, but in the state tournament we have really been smacking the ball around pretty good.”
Ramsey (19-9) got two more in the bottom of the fifth when Scott Jezequel drew a leadoff walk, Feehan followed with a single and Brian McHale laid down a sacrifice bunt that turned out even better when the ball was thrown away. Jezequel scored on the miscue, Feehan came home to make it 6-1 on Rob Sartori's single and two innings later the Rams were in a dog-pile on the mound celebrating the state sectional championship.
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Dan Rafferty throw the first 4+ innings for Lenape Valley, which finished the season at 18-6. |
Everybody contributed to the win as seven of the nine hitters in the lineup had one hit a piece and the other two found ways to pitch in. Brian Donovan drive in the final run of the game in the bottom of the six as he followed Konnor Shetler's lead off triple with a sac fly to center field and McHale got down the bunt that set off the chain of events that led to the first run on the fifth.
So now it is on to the Group 2 state semifinals where Ramsey will meet Bernards on Tuesday at William Paterson University with the winner heading to Toms River for the state final next weekend.
“We've had a great season and nothing can take away from that. We have the trophy and that is nice. The last time we made it this far in 2010 we didn't quite make it down to Toms River. We lost in that in between game to West Essex by a run and I am going to remind them of that,” said Chesney. “We really have to stay focused for that [semifinal] because you don't win anything for that one. It's easy to say it doesn't mean anything, but it really means a lot because you can't get to Toms River without it.”
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