Upper Perk gains controversial win

By Don Bostrom
Of The Morning Call


The dark side of the force helped the Upper Perkiomen Chiefs to a controversial 10-8 victory over visiting Gilbertsville last night in a Tri-County League summit meeting.

The Chiefs, who now trail Gilbertsville by just two games in the South Division pennant chase, capped a rally from a 7-3 hole with a dramatic four- run rally in the home sixth.

Joe Ricapito, a Steve Balboni clone, supplied the finishing touch with a towering two-run homer to left off reliever Pete Hyriak.

Gilbertsville, 18-3, answered with a stirring rally of its own in the top of the seventh only to have the umpires call the game because of darkness.

Clean-up man Jeff Evans, who had two singles, rocketed a two- out, two-run homer off good friend Bob Graber to apparently tie the game and Joe Melcher and Chris Gross followed with ringing singles when play was called and the score reverted back to the inning before.

"One side will agree with a decision like that and the other won't," said Graber, the Chiefs manager. "In that situation, I think it was a tough time to call it. You can't predict what will happen. They definitely want to try to hit. We would have had to bat again and it was going to be tough, it was really going to get dark."

Gilbertsville pilot Brian Gilbert, who along with Evans and Kevin Gilbert had two hits each, debated loudly with the home plate umpire as the large crowd listened.

"You don't call a game of this importance between a first and second place team," Gilbert said. "Let us at least try to finish things. We might be able to get it in."

"One of Brian's arguments was that they might have been able to get us out on three pitches," Graber said. "There would have been enough light for that. The odds are against that happening, but you never know. Maybe we should have played some more to erase any doubt."

There was nothing tainted about Upper Perk's rousing comeback in the sixth. Graber, who worked 3 2/3 innings of two-hit relief to notch his third win without a loss, started things with a drag bunt single off Lew Chillot.

Todd Swenk lashed a double to left and Gilbertsville brought on Hyriak.

Red-hot Pete Hoff, who had three of UP's 10 hits, promptly singled to left to tie the game 8-8 and Ricapito launched his second homer of the season.

"That's the best homer I've had," said Ricapito, who had looked awful in striking out his prior two at-bats. "Especially because it came against that team. I was sitting on a fastball. I didn't think it was going atfirst. It was a towering fly and it just kept carrying."

The blow might just carry the Chiefs right back into the pennant race.

"No question," Graber said. "If they won tonight it was pretty much over. They would have been four games up with seven to go. Now, we're two behind and they have some tough games coming up. Still, we'll have to win all of our games."

"We seem to get down every game against the better teams and we have to keep battling back," Graber said.

Both teams looked like the Curly Howard All-Stars on defense at times.

Seven Chief errors led to five unearned Gilbertsville runs.

UP got back into it when a Gilbertsville player dropped a routine, two-out pop-up while two runs scampered home.

Conversely, a sterling catch by UP leftfielder Glenn Mensch with the bases-loaded in the fifth saved things.

Mensch galloped into the gap and dove to spear a Scott Gilbert shot that would have plated three runs and given the perennial league champs a 10-5 lead at the time.

"I've occasionally made catches like that," Mensch said. "What helped was the ball was tailing towards me because it was off the bat of a lefty hitter."

Mensch then started the UP offensive comeback with a sacrifice fly to tally Jon Yeakel, who had gotten into scoring position by ripping the first of his two doubles.



  

From The Morning Call -- July 16, 1987

Copyright © 1987, The Morning Call