Boyertown overcomes errors to win

by Dennis Weller, Special to The Pottstown Mercury

Posted on June 16, 2006

BOYERTOWN -- It was one of those games that, on paper, should not have been much of a contest.

Boyertown was undefeated heading into Thursday night’s Berks County Legion League contest at Bear Stadium and Oley was winless. The Bears came out on top as expected, but some errors on the basepaths by the hosts and some good plays by the visitors kept the score close as Boyertownsurvived with an 8-4 win.

The Bears (7-0 Berks Red Division, 14-0 overall) knocked out 15 hits but had four runners thrown out trying to steal by Lynx catcher Jordan Cardinal and another couple gunned down trying to advance. Eric Hiryak and Mike Schwager each picked up three hits for Boyertown and Kenny Thorpe had two. Shayne Houck (3-0) pitched seven innings for the win, and Todd Speilman recorded a save with two shutout frames during which he allowed only a single and struck out four.

"They did a nice job," Bear manager Rick Moatz said of the Lynx (0-6, Berks White Division, 0-8, overall). "Their pitcher (Steve Ferrara) did a nice job of keeping us off balance. They made routine plays and they made some real good plays. Add to that we made some base running mistakes and we had a close game."

The Bears had men thrown out trying to steal third to end both the first and second innings but scored in the third on singles by Pete Mazzie, Hiryak and Schwager. Oley tied it in the fourth on a hit batter, a passed ball and a hit by Dan Barnhardt, but the hosts regained the lead with two runs in the bottom of the inning on two singles and a two-out error in the outfield.

It looked as if the Bears were on their way to an easy win after they scored two more in the fifth and another in the sixth for a 6-1 margin. But Oley put together five hits against a tiring Houck, including a two-run single by Wade Kunkel, to pull to within 6-4 in the seventh.

Boyertown wrapped things up with single runs in the seventh and eighth while Speilman gave up only a single to Barnhardt in the eighth and retired the side in order in the ninth on two strikeouts and a bouncer to the mound.

"We got a win," Moatz said as he tried to look on the bright side of things. "Shayne threw pretty well. I was pretty happy with the way Shayne threw. He got a little tired. They (Bear pitchers) are getting to the point where they need to work through the plateau and get out of it."

Other than that, the Bear performance probably had more flaws than good points.

"The hitting was there," said Moatz. "But hitting is not the column we are usually interested in. I was more concerned about the way we were playing. A couple of the errors were just outright mistakes, not thinking.

"It was hard for us to come out and get fired up. But I’m not taking anything away from them."

NOTES

Houck threw 104 pitches before being pulled. ... Cardinal threw out five of 10 runners on steal attempts and hung onto the ball on a couple of hard hits at the plate to record outs. ... Oley third baseman Ian Delancey make a great stop behind third base in the eighth and an equally fine throw home for an out. ... Ferrara went 6-2/3’s innings before being hit by a line drive.

[ return to previous page ]