Gateway’s Brett Turban, right, beats the tag at home during Wednesday’s MIAA West Div. IV Semi-Final at the UMass Campus against Hopkins Academy. (Photo by Frederick Gore/www.thewestfieldnews.smugmug.com)
AMHERST – The Gateway Regional High School baseball team’s hopes for its first Western Massachusetts championship title in nearly a decade hit a wall in the form of Hopkins Academy’s young pitcher Jonathan Morrison.
Morrison, an eighth grader, recorded 10 strikeouts and pitched a one-hitter to lead No. 3 Hopkins past second-seeded Gateway in a west sectional semifinal 6-5 Wednesday at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Earl Lorden Field.
“This was just the weirdest game I have ever experienced in my life,” Gateway coach Gary St. Peter said.
Gateway scored five runs – without a hit – and Hopkins scored its first five runs with two outs.
Hopkins Academy jumped out to the early lead.
In the first inning, Hopkins No. 2 batter Evan Delaney walked and stole second base. Then with two outs, all the scoring began.
Clean-up hitter Brett Morrison hit a bloop single to shallow left field, scoring Delaney. Andrew Omer hit a run-scoring double to deep left field well beyond the reach of the left fielder. Jake Kosakowski followed with a hot shot single through the left side for another run. The Golden Hawks led 3-0.
Even Hopkins’ outs echoed loudly inside the UMass stadium walls. Lead-off batter, John Jacques hit a laser shot to center field that center fielder Johnny Haskell squeezed for the game’s first out. Zachary Kelley hit a towering one-out fly ball to center field that Haskell also hauled in.
Gateway bounced back quickly, and it literally took a bounce of the ball to nearly even up the affair.
Haskell reached first base and advanced to second on two straight fielding errors. Justin Edinger walked and stole second. Two wild pitches resulted in two Gateway runs and a 3-2 score.
The odd first inning came to an end with Hopkins starting pitcher Jonathan Morrison striking out three consecutive batters.
Hopkins reclaimed a 3-run lead in the second. Again with two outs, the Golden Hawks did damage.
Drew Castronovo walked and advanced to second on a sac-bunt. Evan Delaney roped a two-out single through the right side for a 4-2 lead. Kelley followed with a hard bounding single that took a high, tricky hop through the middle of the infield and resulted in the team’s fifth run.
In another odd twist of fate, the opportunistic Gators managed to tie the game without a single hit.
Gateway’s Nos. 7 and 9 batters, Everett Warner and Brett Turban reached on walks. With two outs, Haskell launched a high fly ball to deep center field. The outfielder retreated into position, a bit too slowly, and dropped the ball, resulting in two runs. A wild pitch tied the game 5-all.
Gateway’s Geoff Sobotka, left, congratulates Johnny Haskell after scoring against Hopkins Academy. (Photo by Frederick Gore/www.thewestfieldnews.smugmug.com)
Morrison got out of the second with a strikeout, his third of the inning and sixth in nine at-bats.
The middle innings offered a bit of a reprieve from the oddities of the early onset, save for a base hit from eighth grader Brett Turban, who broke up Morrison’s no-hit bid, and freshman reliever Brett Turban’s strikeout of Jacques with the bases loaded in the top of the fifth.
Turban was inserted with the bases juiced, but got ahead of Jacques and got Hopkins’ lead-off batter to chase the high heat for the final out of the inning.
Still, the Golden Hawks managed to squeeze one run across in the fifth when Morrison drew a walk after battling back from being down 0-2 in the count, advanced to third on a Kosakowski single, and scored on Bernard’s sac-fly.
Gateway continued to battle with the game drawing late.
After allowing Kelley to reach on a one-out single, Turban picked him off with a great move on the mound. Morrison reached on a two-out single, stole second, and was poised to score when the Gators botched routine play for what would have been the third out of the inning, only to throw out the base runner at the plate to keep the game within one run.
Gateway’s defense shined again in the seventh inning. Haskell turned an inning-ending double play, grabbing a fly ball in the outfield and completing the play with a spectacular throw to first base to pick off the base runner.
Gateway donned its rally caps in the last half of the seventh, but fell just short. The Gators loaded the bases with two-out walks from Turban and Edinger sandwiched around an error, which allowed Haskell to reach for the third time in the game.
Hopkins turned to Jacques with the bases loaded. The Golden Hawks closer forced a weak pop fly in the infield to end it.
