Win three straight in Babe Ruth tourney
By: Bob Nuse
LAWRENCE When you’re 14 years old, chances are you haven’t yet experienced all life has to offer.
But when it comes to baseball, the Montgomery 14-year-old all-star baseball team has experienced a whole lot more than most.
"There is no doubt it helps with the fact that there is no situation that we’re going to get intimidated with," said Montgomery manager Sean Friel, whose team advanced to the 13-year-old Babe Ruth World Series last summer and the Cal Ripken World Series the previous summer. "With the games we’ve played and the big crowds we have played in front of, and the important games, no teams we play can match that, and it makes a big difference."
Montgomery was faced with having to play three games in three days to open the 14-year-old District One Tournament, and came away with three straight wins to advance to Thursday’s winners’ bracket final. For Montgomery, each win was more impressive than the one before.
On Friday, Montgomery overcame a strong pitching performance by West Windsor-Plainsboro’s Kyle Reed for a 5-2 win. One night later, Montgomery topped Hightstown, 8-2, before topping Hamilton on Sunday night, 13-3.
Princeton-Cranbury opened the tournament with a pair of wins before falling into the losers’ bracket with a 14-5 loss to Ewing on Sunday. WW-P, with the hard-luck draw in the event, dropped an 8-5 decision to Nottingham on Sunday and was eliminated from the tournament.
Montgomery, which seemed to play better with each game of the tournament, is off until Thursday when it will meet Ewing in the winners’ bracket final at 6 p.m. And in each game, Montgomery received good enough pitching to allow the offense time to get rolling.
"I knew we had good pitching," said Montgomery’s Taylor Mulligan, who picked up the win on Saturday against Hightstown. "We’re pretty deep and we can all go a lot. We had Matt (Chin) pitch well tonight and the same with Jon (Scott), he pitched real well.
"I’ve been pitching a little, but that was the first big game I pitched. I started off a little shaky, but then I did pretty well."
Montgomery had its best offensive game of the tournament on Sunday, pounding out 15 hits and taking advantage of four Hamilton errors in the 13-3 win. Meanwhile, Scott and Chin limited Hamilton to just five hits over six innings.
"Everybody was starting to hit today," said Mulligan, who had two hits, including a triple, in the win. "The games before, everybody was popping up a lot and the hits weren’t falling. But today they started to fall. I think playing games and working hard has helped us with our hitting."
And experience helped overcome a shaky first, when Hamilton loaded the bases with no outs but scored just one. Montgomery then scored three times in the first and three more in the second to begin to put the game away.
"Experience helps a lot," Mulligan said. "We know that when we’re down by a couple runs, we can still come back like we did the first game when we were down and came back."
With the bats going, Montgomery could now be on track for a repeat as District One champs.
"In both of the games, I felt like we hit the ball pretty well, but not as well as we’re capable of," Friel said. "We hit it well, but it seemed like it was right to somebody in the first couple games. Tonight, it seemed like we were hitting it a little harder and putting the ball in the gaps a little more."
And with a strong pitching staff, any offense makes Montgomery a tough team to beat.
"That’s where we’re really deep," Friel said. "And I have other guys that could have pitched. We had the disadvantage of having to play that extra game with three games in three days. But for us, we look at it as we have enough pitching that it doesn’t bother us.
"Mike Ford could have given us a couple innings today. And J.T. (Tartacoff) could have pitched. So we were in good shape coming into today. But a lot of that was because Mike Ford gave us a complete game on Friday. And then Taylor gave us six innings on Saturday. So we basically had the whole pitching staff left with one game to play."
P-C had opened the tournament with a pair of wins, topping Trenton, 13-2, on Friday before rallying to beat Lawrence, 7-5, on Saturday.
In the win over Trenton, Eric Hoffman picked up the win on the mound. Against Lawrence, P-C scored two runs in the top of the seventh on base hits by Ho-Sung Kang and Jordan Metro. Then in the top of the eighth, Danny Powell’s bases-loaded hit gave P-C a 6-5 lead. Mike Van Itallie then singled for a 7-5 lead. Colin Graydon finished with four hits, while Thomas Hrabchak and Powell had two hits apiece. Metro tossed four scoreless innings in relief to earn the win. Steve Etherton tossed a scoreless eighth for the save.
P-C came up short against Ewing, trailing 6-5 after two innings before Ewing pulled away to send P-C to the losers’ bracket, where it will meet either Trenton or Hightstown on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.
"This is a really tough district," P-C manager Dave Etherton said. "These teams are really good and you have got to do stuff right. Since we had to come back (Saturday), I used the pitcher I had hoped to use. We had to go deeper into the rotation and it’s tough against a team like this that hits the ball."
P-C also hits the ball. And this is a group that has had its share of success over the years.
"A lot of the kids in this group have pretty much been together since they were 8 years old," Etherton said. "People have a lot of different strategies. I’m just trying to deliver them to high school. Hopefully when they get there the coaches will be able to keep working with them and they’ll be successful. This is a good group. They’ve had a lot of success over the years."
WW-P was eliminated after losses to two of the top teams in the tournament. After dropping the 5-2 decision to Montgomery on Friday, WW-P lost to Nottingham, 8-5, Sunday in the losers’ bracket.
Against Montgomery, Reed allowed just three runs on six hits over the first six innings. WW-P took a 2-1 lead in the fourth when Reed singled and scored on an Andy Vogt triple. Chet Otis then singled to drive in Vogt. That lead held until the sixth, when Montgomery went ahead.
WW-P had a 5-1 lead in the third against Nottingham on Sunday before falling. Reed had three hits and drove in a run. Pitchers Evan Smith, Reed and Phil Trachtenberg allowed just three hits and two earned runs in six innings.