Gilbertsville sweeps Banko's for L. V. Crown

By Keith Groller
Of The Morning Call


Even though they were placed in what one player called a "no-win situation," the Gilbertsville Rangers went out and did the only thing they seem to know how to do -- win.

Gilbertsville wrapped up the local amateur baseball season and the Lehigh Valley Championship with a 4-1 win over Banko's Orioles before close to 100 fans at Limeport Stadium last night.

Tom Hartman tossed a five-hitter, yielding just two hits over the final six innings, as the Tri-County League champions capped a glorious 34-4 summer by sweeping the best-of-three L.V. Series.

The series, unfortunately, may be remembered more for who wasn't there than for who came out on top. Northampton, as most local baseball fans know by now, won the Blue Mountain League but said it couldn't field a team for the L.V. Series.

"It's true, we were really in a no-win situation here," Hartman said. "If we beat these guys, well, people are going to say that they were only 16-24 and we should beat them. If we lost, we'd look very bad. We just tried to make the best of a tough situation and played to win like any other game."

This win didn't come as easily as Friday night's 11-3 triumph in the series opener. Banko's, playing without a few of its regulars and coming off a three-week layoff, actually scored first. The Orioles got to Hartman for three hits in the opening inning with Matt Merkle's single scoring Doug Focht with two out.

But from there, the Orioles would get just a fifth-inning single by Focht (four hits in the two games) and a sixth-inning double by Merkle.

"It's been about a week and a half since I had pitched and I wasn't real loose when I went out there," said Hartman, who walked two and struck out two. "I should have loosened up more on the side. I did get looser as the game went on.

"I wasn't getting ahead of people, so I didn't get a lot of strikeouts. I was trying to work guys in and out and pretty much let guys hit the ball, but not have it come off the meat of the bat."

Meanwhile, the meat of the Ranger order -- Greg Gilbert, Jeff Evans and Bob Drumbore -- was limited to just two singles last night. But Gilbertsville was able to bunch four of its six hits in the first three innings off Banko's hurler Dave Stoudt and scratch out four runs.

Evans singled in a run in the first and Chris Mackey, the tourney MVP with three hits and four runs scored in the two games, drilled an RBI double in the second. Marty Bauer added a run-scoring single in the second and Neil Fox's sacrifice fly brought home an unearned tally in the third.

Stoudt settled down from there, but because of Hartman's effectiveness, the Orioles couldn't cut the gap.

"Tommy did a real nice job for us tonight and shut them down," said Ranger player-manager Ryan Fox. "Obviously, this series didn't turn out the way we wanted it to, but we did all we could do. We played the Blue Mountain League representative that was here and I hope we earned some respect for the Tri-County League.

"There are a lot of people in our league that work hard and have been around a long time and this one's for them. I'm talking about people like Jack Evans, Chip Friday, Ray Ganser, Don Rosenberger, Chuck Ciganick and his wife, Ishky Fatzinger and the Limeport Stadium Committee which had this field in outstanding shape. We have a very good team here and had an outstanding year and I just hope we've earned the Tri-County some respect."

At the same time, Fox reiterated his respect for Banko's and Hellertown for offering to play on the spur of the moment to insure that the series would go as had been planned all summer.

"You've got to really have respect for people who care about their league and were willing to do that at the last moment, knowing that they couldn't possibly field their best team," Fox said. "I know that they weren't happy with what went on with the Northampton situation."

Fox wouldn't criticize Northampton for bowing out of the series about 24 hours before it was to begin, saying, "I don't know what their situation was and I can't say they should have been here. The timing of the thing was the only thing I could question."

Evans, the Tri-Co president, was a little less kind to Northampton.

"I want to go on the record saying that Northampton just doesn't know the meaning of the word commitment," Evans said. "It must not be in their vocabulary.

"They were the same guys who with Lehigh Township didn't complete their season last year. They joined our league last winter and then a month later, without even informing us, joined the Blue Mountain League. Now, this is the third incident. In my book, three strikes and you're out.

"I just hope that the Blue Mountain League takes an appropriate action because what happened here wasn't in the best interest of amateur baseball in the Lehigh Valley."



keith.groller@mcall.com

From The Morning Call -- August 23, 1992

Copyright © 1992, The Morning Call