They weren’t the hottest team or the coldest when the playoffs began. They didn’t have the best hitting or the best pitching. And they didn’t take the easy way on Saturday night.
But the Harwich Mariners are the 2011 Cape Cod Baseball League champions.
The Mariners clinched the title — their second in four years — with a wild 7-5 victory over Falmouth last night in game two of the championship series. Harwich had taken game one the night before, and this time, held off a 16-hit attack by the Commodores to win.
It was fitting that the clincher wasn’t smooth. Harwich looked like a contender early this season when it got out to a 10-4 start in the first two weeks, but the label wasn’t always sticking. The Mariners were a contender in the way everybody’s a contender, but they didn’t look like the best. They hit .238 as a team, second-worst in the league. Their team ERA was 3.35, good for only sixth in the league. And they never seemed to get on a roll — in one mid-season stretch, they were in a tight battle with Brewster for first place, but the way it went, it almost looked like neither team wanted to win the battle.
The playoffs got off to a rough start, too. Harwich dropped its first game to Brewster by a 3-1 score.
But Harwich didn’t count itself out.
“We were next-to-last in hitting and sixth in pitching,” manager Steve Englert told the Cape Cod Times. “They don’t have a column for (intestinal fortitude). If they had a column for it, we’d be No. 1.”
That’s not just something you say after you win, something to explain how you did it. Englert and anybody who saw the Mariners over the past week could see it.
After the first-game loss to Brewster, the Mariners didn’t lose again. They won two straight to take the series then swept Y-D for a spot in the finals. Matching up against a hot Falmouth squad, the Mariners found a way to win both games by narrow margins.
That’s probably the best way to sum it up — they found a way.
On Saturday, the way included three errors, 16 hits by Falmouth and a DH doubling as a pitcher for just the third time this season. Somehow, it worked.
Jake Davies (Georgia Tech), who had made two appearances in the regular season, got the start for Harwich and was charged with four runs in 2.1 innings. Only one of the runs was earned. Harwich trailed 4-3 when he left the game, handing it to the bullpen with a lot of game left.
In the fifth, Harwich got the lead when John Wooten (East Carolina) hit a home run, his second in as many nights. But Falmouth came back with a run in the bottom of the sixth to tie it.
But the final three innings — somehow, some way — belonged to Harwich. In the top of the seventh — against a pitcher, DeAndre Smelter (Georgia Tech), who hadn’t allowed a run in the playoffs — Darnell Sweeney (Central Florida) drew a walk and came around with the go-ahead run on a double by Davies. With Falmouth’s lights-out closer John Simms (Rice) coming in, Harwich still managed to add an insurance run as Mike Garza (Georgetown) plated Davies with a single.
Then the Harwich bullpen — a unit that’s been awesome this year — went to work. Even for them, it wasn’t a smooth path, but they managed to navigate it.
In the seventh, Falmouth loaded the bases with one out against Grant Gordon (Missouri State), but Blake Hauser (VCU) came in and got out of the jam with a strikeout and a groundout against the top of Falmouth’s order.
In the eighth, Falmouth put two more on thanks to a walk and a single. With two outs, Chris Overman (NC State) replaced Hauser and struck out Ryan Moore (UConn) to end the inning.
Then in the ninth, Falmouth loaded the bases again on three singles, and this time did it with nobody out. On top of that, Falmouth’s hottest hitters were coming up.
But one more time, Overman and the Commodores found a way. Overman got Reid Redman (Texas Tech) to pop out then struck out Jeremy Baltz (St. John’s) on four pitches. Then, on a 3-2 pitch, Overman got Jake Rodriguez (Oregon State) to hit a popup. Catcher Alex Swim (Elon) got under it and squeezed it for the final out.
Harwich could celebrate.
It was fitting, too, that Overman was the one to end it. He made 23 appearances this summer and didn’t allow an earned run. The spots he was in Saturday were some of his toughest — he had never allowed more than two hits in an outing and rarely more than one. But he found a way.
That was good enough for Harwich. And good enough for a championship.
Harwich may not have looked the part at every turn, but with the summer over, it’s official — the Mariners are the best.
Will, thanks for your daily updates, I enjoyed them daily! Also, you are a really excellent writer and love your daily themes. Thanks again for the time you put into this blog and look forward already to next year! Cape Cod baseball is #1 and it’s so nice to see a blog dedicted to it! Steve
Will, I have been following Right Field Fog since you started and this blog is now part of my summer each year! thanks again
Thanks, Steve. And thanks for all your roster updates. Much appreciated.