Baseball team wins 82-0: 'As an umpire or as a coach, you don't want to see a game like that'

Yes, a local baseball team really won 82-0.

This is not a misprint.

On Saturday, the Old Rochester baseball team traveled to play Notre Dame Cristo Rey and returned with an 82-0 victory.

According to published reports, the Bulldogs, members of the South Coast Conference, led 32-0 after two innings and did all they could to minimize the damage without blindly swinging at pitches well above their heads, in the dirt and behind their backs.

In a story that ran in the Boston Herald earlier this week, Cristo Rey director of athletics Georgie Rosario said he did not have any resentment toward Old Rochester veteran coach Steve Carvalho.

“I don't have a problem with Old Rochester at all, they are a program we're trying to be like,” Rosario said.

In that same story, Carvalho said the game result left him "sick to my stomach."

“We really tried everything possible," Carvalho told the Boston Herald. "We told the kids don't take extra bases, no sprinting - we even had kids bunting and they couldn't make the routine plays. We had kids hitting balls 300 feet and jogging to first. We even asked that they stop the game after four innings and they said no. Believe me, we exhausted all options in our power.”

With the game being so out of hand and uncomfortable for everyone involved, and the winning team doing nearly everything possible to control the bleeding, wouldn't the umpires be able to use some authority and halt the game?

"As an umpire, you really can't do anything except maybe expand the strike zone, but you don't want to make a mockery out of that either," said Chris Roberts, a veteran high school baseball umpire of 25 years. "It's not something we want to do, but once you get north of, say, 30 runs, you try to minimize the damage. We can't stop the game because of a score. It has to go five innings, or four and a half, unless there is a weather or darkness element attached to it."

"I was involved in a legion state tournament game that was something like 37-1. The team ran out of pitchers. It was a game that just snowballed, and that one had to go at least seven since it was a nine-inning game. As an umpire or as a coach, you don't want to see a game like that."

The score of the game brings back memories of a girls' basketball state tournament game played this year when East Bridgewater routed Madison Park 93-7. The baseball game, however, has one major difference from the basketball game.

"This is different than East Bridgewater because East Bridgewater was pressing in the second half with the starters still in," said Roberts. "That's when you make a mockery of the game. If Steve (Carvalho) was having his team steal bases during this game, that would be wrong. The last thing Steve would do would be to try to embarrass someone like that. Steve is a high character guy. Knowing Steve, he wouldn't do that. He is well respected and I'm sure he feels bad."

Old Rochester is scheduled to play Notre Dame Cristo Rey later this season (May 19) in Mattapoisett.