Gabelsville squares Tri-Co series with Cetronia

The Owls shake off rustiness from first-round bye, pound out 16 hits.


By Keith Groller
Of The Morning Call

 

Sometimes receiving a bye in the first round of the playoffs can lead to going bye-bye in Round 2.

Gabelsville went 28-4 in the Tri-County League regular season, earned a first-round bye that gave them 10 days off in a row and were promptly dumped in Game 1 of its semifinal series with Cetronia.

But Saturday night, the Owls shook off any lingering layoff effects to swat 16 hits and roared back from a 4-0 deficit for a 10-6 win over Cetronia at the Cedarbrook Complex.

The best-of-5 series, now knotted at a game apiece, resumes at 5 p.m. today at Gabelsville. Game 4 will be played at 5:45 p.m. Monday at Cetronia.

Game 4 of the South Whitehall-Limeport semifinal series, originally slated for Monday at Cedarbrook, has been moved to Tuesday.

"A first-round bye can help you, especially if you've got sore hamstrings and sore arms," said veteran Gabelsville skipper Mike "Doc" Moyer.

"But it also hurts you because you don't see live pitching and deal with game situations. We practiced four times in that 10-day layoff, but we were still a little rusty Thursday. Those guys (Cetronia) were sharp and hit the ball."

The Gabelsville rust wasn't gone early Saturday when two Owl errors helped Cetronia score four runs in the bottom of the first.

Gabelsville came right back with six hits to score four runs in the top of the second to tie it. But Cetronia moved back in front in the bottom half. Matt Moore (4-for-4, 3 runs, 2 RBIs) singled and scored on Mike Merkle's triple.

The Owls tied the game with a run in the fifth, but could have had much more. Veteran Jeff Evans was picked off at first and Greg Miller was thrown out trying to go first-to-third on a single.

"We didn't necessarily play our best tonight," Moyer said. "I got here late and as I was pulling up, they were scoring four runs. We made some base-running errors in that fifth inning that hurt. I was pretty ticked off. But we overcame our mistakes."

The inning that put the Owls over the top was the fifth when Ed Reilly, Dave Pence, Neil Fox and Shawn Betz knocked in runs with hits.

Fox's hit was a two-run double. Betz's hit was his fourth of the game.

"When you get that many hits in a game, you can't complain," said Betz, a 1996 Boyertown High grad and one of the youngest members of the Owls.

"We're finally starting to get back in the groove. We were rusty. If we don't make mistakes, I don't think there are many teams that match up well with us or can beat us. This was a big one to get because we didn't want to go down 2-0."

Cetronia, which had been the Tri-Co's hottest team over the final weeks of the season with 13 wins in its last 15 regular season games, never went down in order against Gabelsville's veteran pitcher Bob Drumbore.

But despite 13 hits in all, the Longhorns couldn't get a clutch hit over the final five innings, getting just one run on Moore's bases-empty home run in the sixth.

"They hit and we didn't ... at least in the clutch," said Cetronia player-manager George Horn after his team fell to 21-16. "We just have to come right back Sunday. I'm glad we're playing three straight nights because our guys just like to play ball."

Horn's doesn't think the loss, Cetronia's first after four playoff wins, will stop the Longhorns' momentum, although he knows playing Gabelsville is no picnic.

"To me, they are the best team in the league, but we're the hottest," he said. "Whoever wins this series will probably win the title. That's how I feel. That's not a knock on Limeport or South Whitehall, but the two teams in this series are really playing good baseball right now."



keith.groller@mcall.com

From The Morning Call -- August 8, 1998

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