Flyers Baseball Sweeps St. Mary’s in Grand Style

There’s an old saying in baseball: “Some days you win, some days you lose and some days it rains.”

It has been raining a lot for St. Mary’s – both literally and figuratively. After being washed out last week, the Gaels played a double header against Chaminade on Saturday with the kicker on Monday, proceeding to have the same result they have had all year: losses.

This is nothing personal about St. Mary’s – somebody has to be the league’s punching bag each year – and no team wants the ignoble distinction of being the lineup that allowed the Gaels to get up off the matt, much less lose pace to the rest of the league in the standings.

Chaminade came close to being that first team Saturday – eking out a 9-8 win that went 9 innings – a devastating loss even for any team hapless or not. Especially after the Flyers had put up an 8-1 lead in the seventh.

“The idea is ‘keep playing hard’,” first base coach Jack Lyons said. “In line with that we always try to get the kids to swing or something if that materializes.”

Monday’s was much more of a laffer. Of the 16-2 variety to be exact.

Righty Jonathan O’Hare earned his first win after having allowed an early 2-0 lead on an error, triple and passed ball before settling down before Chaminade had managed to plate a couple of their own in the third.

Then the merry-go-round started in the fifth as the Flyers began to make mincemeat out of the Gael bullpen, batting around in the inning and again in the seventh, sending 23 batters up to the plate during the course of an hour combined.

In that time the Flyers banged out six hits and seven walks – including four straight walks to load the bases for shortstop Terence Connelly.

Chaminade already had an inside-the-park grand slam earlier this season. In high school it’s rare to see one disappear over the fence; there just aren’t a lot of power hitters that can drive it around the high school level.

Don’t tell that to the Chaminade captain who took an 0-1 fastball, tattooing it 320 feet over the right field fence, providing the cap to the 7 run frame before being mobbed at the plate by his teammates.

“I just turned on it,” the senior said, hitting the first slam of his career. “I thought it was going to go off the wall. It’s a good feeling.”

It is a good feeling in the Flyers dugout right now – with a series against St. Anthony’s currently underway that could decide first place and playoff implications.

“We’re picking it up in the second half,” said firstbaseman Robert Hopes, who along with secondbaseman Zachary Hieb had set the table for the Flyers in three straight innings. “Five wins in a row now, makes it 8-5, we’ve just been swinging at (our) pitches driving the ball better, figuring out better pitches to hit.”