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Lake Braddock baseball blows past Chantilly
With the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the fifth inning during Friday's Northern Region baseball final, Lake Braddock senior Shane Halley worked Chantilly pitcher Chris Yates to a full count. Knowing exactly what pitch he'd like to hit, Halley lunged and swung anxiously at something that hardly resembled that previous thought.
When his skyward shot sailed out toward second base, a “[ticked] off” Halley dropped his head and sprinted at full speed toward second -- self-punishment for a miserable at-bat. Halley's teammates followed suit, practicing the “two-out, run-on-contact mantra” that's taught to youngsters only after the importance of sunflower seeds.
With Halley and Co. hustling around the bases, the soaring baseball echoed their every move, darting with the wind and forcing Chantilly second baseman Roger Strittmatter to make an awkward, last-ditch turn back toward his left.
The baseball descended back down to Earth and with it brought three pivotal runs that provided the winning margin for Lake Braddock's sixth region title, a 9-6 victory over Chantilly (18-7).
“[The popup] was so high and the wind was blowing,” said Lake Braddock coach Jody Rutherford, describing Halley's officially-scored three-run double. “With the wind blowing out a little bit, it just looked like it started to move.
“I give our guys credit, we had a guy that scored from first base on that ball. That tells you how hard they were hustling and how high that popup was.”
Though Lake Braddock's Shannon Mark followed with a two-run blast, Chantilly's deficit wasn't entirely attributable to Halley's wind-blown accident. The Chargers -- mostly known for their deep and talented pitching staff -- issued eight walks and hit two batters in six innings of work.
Yates, who entered the game in the third inning to relieve starter Jordan Johnson, recorded two outs on seven pitches in the fifth before issuing back-to-back walks to Lake Braddock seniors Brenden Daley and Ryan Buckrop, who finished 1-for-2 with a home run, two walks and two runs scored. Freshman third baseman Kenny Towns made Yates pay, lacing an RBI-single to left to bring the Bruins within two, 6-4.
“We played with fire and they're a good hitting team,” said Chantilly coach Kevin Ford, alluding to the fact that his team yielded only three runs through the first four innings, although Lake Braddock left seven runners on base. “We struggled on the mound, and it came to bite us there in that one inning.”
Chantilly's sudden loss of control may have only been less puzzling than its newfound adoration of the long ball. Junior first baseman Brian King, senior catcher Keith Morrisroe and senior left fielder Patrick Moore each went yard for the Chargers, while Moore and King hit their homers during a three-run fourth that seemingly gave Chantilly an edge.
But even after Morrisroe's two-run blast in the fifth, Lake Braddock responded with its six-run explosion as the Bruins batted around for the third consecutive time during the Northern Region tournament.
“For the past few games, we've been a little slow to see the pitcher. But once we started hitting it was just hit after hit,” said Halley, who pridefully helped chase down Rutherford for his obligatory Gatorade bath. “We're hitting the ball hard, it's just usually right at someone. Eventually it's going to find a hole and that's what we tell our players. They started finding holes and we got lucky.”
Not that there's a whole lot of luck involved with winning 19 straight games -- Lake Braddock's current string of success.
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