Trinity College Captures First
NCAA Divsion III Baseball Title
Trinity College couldn’t make
history on Tuesday, but the Bantams gladly took home
a consolation prize – the national championship.
Trinity (Conn.) was foiled it its bid
to be the first team to go undefeated and win a national
title, but the Bantams pulled off a come-from-behind
5-4 win Johns Hopkins University in the NCAA Division
III Baseball Championship game at Time Warner Cable
Field at Fox Cities Stadium.
Reserve third baseman Guy Gogliettino
drew a bases-loaded walk in the bottom of the ninth
to lift Trinity (45-1) to their first NCAA team championship
in any sport.
“We just met our final goal.
I know everybody’s talking about this undefeated
gig that we really didn’t talk about. It just
kind of happened,” said Trinity head coach Bill
Decker, who saw his team fall 4-3 earlier Tuesday (May
27) to force a second title game.
“These were two great ballgames.
At the end of the day, this was a message we’ve
done for a long time, we talk about grinding it out,
doing whatever it takes to win, have a will to just
kind of hang in there.”
The game was tied 3-3 heading into
the ninth when Johns Hopkins catcher Tony Margve led
off the inning with a single. Jon Solomon followed with
another single, and the Blue Jays (42-8) had runners
at the corners.
After a short fly out, Matt Benchener’s
sacrifice fly scored Margve to put the Blue Jays up
4-3.
The Bantams got a one-out infield single
from Kent Graham to get the winning rally started in
the bottom of the ninth. James Wood followed with a
single through the right side to put runners at the
corners.
After Wood stole second, Thomas DiBenedetto
struck out. Blue Jays reliever Matt Wiegand then intentionally
walked Chandler Barnard to load the bases with two outs.
“The first thing I said to (Wiegand),
‘If we choose to put this kid on intentionally,
that won’t affect you? You’ll be able to
throw strikes, correct?’ And he said yes,”
Johns Hopkins head coach Bob Babb said. “You can’t
worry about the negatives. You have to play the game
with what you see, and that kid (Barnard) had given
us trouble.”
Barnard went 3-for-4 with two runs
scored in the title game.
“I didn’t want (Barnard)
to beat us,” Babb said. “I thought we had
a better chance to get the next guy out. It just didn’t
work out. “
Wiegand then faced Matt Sullivan and
his 3-2 pitch just missed inside to force in Graham
and tie the game at 4-4.
“(Home plate umpire Todd Olinger)
called it a ball,” Margve said. “There’s
nothing we can do about that. It shouldn’t have
come down to that. You can’t change that now.”
That brought Gogliettino to the plate
for his first at-bat of the finals. The count went to
2-2 when Gogliettino fouled off six consecutive pitches.
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