Owls keep Yankees off-balance in Game 2

By John Hellig
Special to The Morning Call

 

For most of the regular season, Gabelsville did not execute well enough to consider itself the elite team in the Tri-County baseball league.

After Monday's opening-game 7-7 tie in the Tri-County League Championship, everyone expected Tuesday's rematch to be equally spellbinding. But the game, won by the Gabelsville Owls 8-1 over the Northern Yankees, was more messy than nail-biting.

The opening inning gave a hint of what was to come. Owls leadoff hitter John Kalejta walked and reached second when Cody Kulp got on thanks to an error. Kalejta reached third on a wild pitch by Jake Argue and scored when Shane Houck hit a sac fly to left.

In the bottom half of the inning, Yankees leadoff hitter Tim Kay reached second when he hit a soft grounder on an off-speed pitch that pitcher Justin Konnick fielded and flubbed the throw to first. Kay moved to third on Eric Ruff's grounder to short and scored on Adam Sandt's grounder to second.

After one inning the game was 1-1 with no hits.

The Owls (30-7-2) scored twice in the second on a hit batter, two errors and a sacrifice bunt. Score: 3-1. Hits: 0.

Yankees manager Brian Polaha admitted that Konnick kept his team off-balance. ''We hit a lot of lazy fly-outs and not very many line drives.''

Gabelsville made the game honest in the fifth when they sent 10 batters to the plate and scored five runs on six hits. The big hits were doubles by A.J. Bohn and Houck, with singles by Kalejta, Jared Trout, Shawn Betz and Bealer.

Meanwhile, Konnick was never seriously threatened. He threw a good mix of off-speed pitches, some of which would be slow in a slow-pitch softball game, and fastballs. He allowed four hits, three of which came after the Owls had built their 8-1 lead, and fanned just two, but was in control all the while.

''For the past five years I've used that combination,'' Konnick said. ''I've been pitching for 11 years and for the past five I started throwing like that. Number one, it helps me through the season and saves my arm for the playoffs. And when you throw the hard one it seems harder than it really is.''

Konnick said not many teams are able to deal with the strange combination.

''It's unorthodox,'' he said, '' and I'm confident in what I'm doing. It works for me. With a team like we have that can hit the ball around, they can relax and just hit, which helps me.''

''Not like last night at all,'' Owls manager Matt Danner said. ''Justin came out and was throwing strikes and off-speed pitches. Hitting is timing and that's what [his style] is designed to do, throw off their timing. …He did an outstanding job tonight.''

''This was a terrible effort after last night,'' Polaha said. ''We didn't do anything well. It was a terrible game. This is one of our worst efforts all year. We didn't have good at-bats, we didn't play good defense, we didn't do anything well. We were bad all around. The good thing about a long series like this is that we come back tomorrow and play Game 2 and forget about tonight.''

The teams meet again tonight at Bears Stadium in Boyertown at 7:30 p.m.

Gabelsville Owls     120 500 0 -- 8 8 1

Northern Yankees  100 000 0 -- 1 4 6

Konnick and Bealer; Argue, Grazer (5) and Faust. 2B: GO: Bohn, Houck. Notes: GO Shane Houck 2-4, Steve Bealer 1-3 2 RBI.





John Hellig is a freelance writer.

From The Morning Call -- August 12, 2009

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