Conference supremacy

La Plata celebrates first league banner in 8 years

Friday, May 9, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by GARY SMITH La Plata’s Jordan McGraner starts a slide into second base and steals the base safely in Tuesday’s SMAC title-clinching game. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

That described the final week of baseball’s regular season for the La Plata Warriors, which were a perfect 14-0 and ranked fourth in the metro area with a stranglehold on the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference race.

La Plata’s invincibility was dashed with upset losses to a pair of sub-.500 teams April 29 and 30, opening the door for the surging Calvert Cavaliers to steal the SMAC title in Tuesday’s regular season finale between the league’s top two teams.

And visiting Calvert was in position to do so with a late lead until a struggling La Plata offense engineered a sixth-inning rally, plating all of its runs in a gritty 3-1 comeback victory.

The late-inning heroics enabled La Plata (16-2, 14-2 SMAC) to clinch its first SMAC title since 2000 in front of a large fan turnout, holding off a Calvert club (12-6, 12-4) that would have claimed the league banner on a head-to-head tiebreaker with the Warriors had it not relinquished a 1-0 lead.

‘‘The emotions have been like a rollercoaster – when we lost the games we were down, but this [SMAC title] has gotten us right back up. I think we deserve it as hard as we work,” said La Plata senior center fielder Mark Anderson, whose team now heads into the playoffs as the No. 1 seed in the 3A South Region. ‘‘[Calvert] is a good team. They gave us our money’s worth in this game, and that’s real good for our team. We have good momentum going into the playoffs, now. [The last week] was a little scary, but it’s definitely what we needed.

‘‘It shows we can work through tough situations and come back.”

La Plata senior catcher Ross Hunsberger echoed: ‘‘I’d say we’ve been through an emotional rollercoaster the past couple weeks. I think it’s terrible that we actually had to lose those few games to realize how important the season was to us. We really, really wanted this game [against Calvert] extremely, extremely bad.”

La Plata head coach Dan DeVitis added: ‘‘What I’ve been trying to get across to the kids is it’s very hard to be undefeated in any sport. And we were down. The thing I like about [how the SMAC was decided] is there can’t be any questions. The two teams that were on top met.”

La Plata was limited to just one hit – on a first-inning bunt single – before the sixth by one of the SMAC’s top pitchers in Calvert lefty Brandon Crigger, who escaped a bases-loaded, no-outs jam in the first unscathed and stranded seven runners through five.

Crigger retired eight straight batters from the second through fifth and frustrated La Plata to 0 for 8 with runners in scoring position until he was scored on.

In the sixth following a leadoff walk, La Plata finally cracked Crigger with Anderson’s double, slapped just beyond the reach of the third baseman down the left-field line. The Anderson at-bat came on a 0-2 pitch and provided La Plata with runners on second and third with nobody down.

‘‘It was an inside curveball,” Anderson said of the pitch he went after for La Plata’s first hit to leave the infield. ‘‘I just stuck in there. I didn’t hit it real well, but it found its way through.”

Hunsberger followed by lacing a RBI single to center field that scored Mike Boyden with La Plata’s first run to knot the contest. After fanning in his two previous at-bats, Boyden sparked La Plata’s big sixth by working Crigger for a walk on seven pitches.

After his hit, Hunsberger was sacrificed to second with Anderson staying at third. That set the table for Brett Irwin’s one-out single that drove in both runners to give La Plata a 3-1 lead, the eventual outcome.

‘‘There are 11 other [SMAC] teams that wish they could be right here where we’re at, and there were only two teams that had a chance to win [the SMAC title],” Calvert head coach Travis Mister said about the heartbreaker, six outs away from a league banner. ‘‘That [La Plata] team is as advertised. They’re a very good team, senior-oriented. They did exactly what they had to do to win the ballgame. Give them credit.

‘‘Nobody’s disappointed, but it hurts. It hurts when you work so hard and put yourself out there.”

The RBI hit was vindication for Irwin, La Plata’s starting pitcher who lasted 4 1⁄3 innings and yielded Calvert’s run before giving way to reliever Jordan McGraner – the game’s winning hurler in 2 2⁄3 frames of scoreless work.

The Calvert run – produced in the fourth when Doug Kletter belted an RBI single to score Vinnie Bowles, on base with a leadoff hit – was the first earned tally surrendered by the stingy Irwin all season.

‘‘Amazing – that’s the one word to sum it all up – it feels amazing,” said a thankful Hunsberger, who had never previously won a SMAC championship before in any of his three sports – which also includes football and basketball – before Tuesday. ‘‘Crigger is one of the best pitchers we’ve seen thus far. We were hitting the baseball, just right to people. We had a couple of deep shots here and there. We knew they would drop, eventually.

Offensively, McGraner – from his leadoff spot – forced Crigger to labor in his first three at-bats, drawing walks each time on extended full counts that featured multiple foul balls. Those long showdowns with Crigger highlighted his high pitch count by the time he reached the latter innings, which saw La Plata mount a threat in the fifth before breaking through in the sixth.

In relief, McGraner allowed two hits, including one of the leadoff variety in the seventh that was erased on a double play.

Before his relief stint, McGraner made a stellar play at shortstop in Calvert’s fourth by gunning down a runner at the plate with one out. Calvert was already ahead 1-0 at the time and was facing a drawn-in La Plata infield with runners on second and third with one down.

‘‘Definitely, definitely,” DeVitis said of McGraner being the unsung hero. ‘‘The one at-bat he had 11 pitches thrown to him. He worked the count like a leadoff man is supposed to do. And then he threw excellent in relief.”

McGraner’s play at shortstop typified La Plata’s standout defense, which saw third baseman Nate Ryon turn a rare triple play all by himself in the third. Calvert led off the frame with a double and single to put runners at the corners, applying major pressure to Irwin.

The sure-bet scoring scenario was completely erased when Ryon snagged a liner at the bag from Shawn White’s bat on a Calvert hit-and-run.

Ryon immediately tagged third before the runner could retreat there, and then he wheeled around to toss the ball to first – nabbing the other Calvert runner involved in the hit-and-run – to finish off the triple play.