TROY, N.Y. — The Shenendehowa Plainsmen variety baseball team has forced a winner-take-all Section 2 Finals matchup. Stop if you’ve heard that one before.
If you’re still reading, well get ready for another doozy. It’ll be against the same opponent, the Saratoga Springs Blue Streaks, that the team faced a season ago at Joe Bruno Stadium and defeated to bring the hardware back to their stretch of I-87.
Shenendehowa head coach Greg Christodulu said he got the feeling of déjà vu as well, but his came amid Friday night’s Sectional Class AAA Finals Game 2, when his team broke open the ball game to stave off elimination in the best-of-three series, beating Saratoga Springs, 10-3.
“I’m looking at the scoreboard and I’m saying, ‘it’s starting to replicate last year’s scenario,'” Christodulu said postgame. “They win Game 1, we come back and win a Game 2 with a couple of runs and then hey, we’ll see what happens Sunday. We’ll be looking forward to it.”
Saratoga Springs had swiped a 4-1 victory on Thursday night in Game 1, scoring all four runs in the top of the final frame to take the one-game series lead. Saratoga quickly led again to start Game 2, taking a three-run advantage through the first five innings, to back starter lefty-starter Louis Betit, who kept top-seeded Shenendehowa off the board.
The Plainsmen stopped knocking on the door at the top of the sixth inning. They kicked it down.
The defending Section 2 champions posted a six-run top of the sixth inning, capped off by a grand slam from third baseman Cooper Reinisch.
“‘Just hit the ball,'” Reinisch explained on his approach, postgame. “I wasn’t trying to hit a grand slam, I wasn’t trying to hit a line drive; everybody’s like, ‘Oh, hit the ball the other way.’ No, I’m just trying to hit the ball in general and I took my best swing on it, saw the ball cut over the middle, and took a good swing. My best swing I could’ve.”
“It didn’t really hit me until I rounded first base because I knew I got it in the air, I knew it had a chance, but to see it go over was a pretty surreal moment,” he added.
With a newfound, 6-3 lead, Shenendehowa tacked on four more runs in the top of the seventh, this time all via small ball. After back-to-back errors led off the inning, it snowballed into a hit-by-pitch and three straight RBI singles, to take a 10-3 advantage.
The night before, the Plainsmen tallied just two hits in the one-run performance. Friday night the team posted 10 hits, two going for extra bases.
“We just had a meeting and we were trying to be relaxed. I think we went up there kind of stressed out, trying to think about last at-bats, and we can’t do that. We just got to keep every at-bat, on the at-bat, not trying to do too much, just try to hit the ball.”
“I credit the seniors. They called the whole team in for a meeting and the seniors said, ‘This is our last shot.” Christodulu said. “I let them do their thing. They got to take ownership with the results and they took ownership tonight.”
“Our guys, they just kept grinding away, grinding away, and you gotta give them credit because we were struggling, so there was a lot of frustration there,” he added. “But, we finally broke through and you could just feel the air released when Cooper that ball into the night.”
Just as it was a season ago, two different versions of each team have shown up to split the first two contests. Last year, in the Class AA Final Game 3, Shenendehowa went to a committee of arms to win, 3-1.
Sunday at 7 p.m., Shenendehowa will go for the repeat while Saratoga Springs chases the upset.
“We just got to have fun. I think I’m gonna tell these guys, ‘We got to have fun. Don’t get lost in the moments in big games like this. We just got to have fun,'” Reinisch said. “When you have fun, you play your best baseball.”
