Allan Appel Photo
Elvin Perez fouls off before laying down crucial bunt.
When your big bats aren’t hitting, you’ve got to learn to win in other ways — like taking advantage of your opponents’ mistakes.
And like remembering to read the darn bunt sign!
The Wilbur Cross High School Governors baseball team learned that lesson in a nail-biting victory Friday afternoonover Milford’s Jonathan Law High School Lawmen at Rice Field.
Lead-off hitter Luis Roman racing to first base.
The Governors took advantage of two balks by opposing pitcher Zach Merchant and timely bunting by Elvin Perez, who came in off the bench, to win 3 – 2 in seven taut innings and bring Cross’s record to four wins and one loss for the season.
The bat power simply wasn’t there for the usually strong-hitting Cross nine.
However, the one strong hit they mustered — first baseman Jorge Velez’s long 300-foot double into center field — wasn’t wasted.
That’s because he, having advanced to third, was waved in by the umpires when Lawmens’ pitcher balked.
A balk occurs when the pitcher’s free, raised leg, advances in his motion sufficiently far toward the plate — about 45 degrees — so that he must continue. If he breaks the motion, stops, or, for example, throws to a base, as he did in the game, that’s illegal. A balk has occurred, and the base-runners advance.
That’s how the Govs took a 1 – 0 lead in the second inning.
Bunting specialist Perez, with one of the fouls he retrieved.
But the balk party wasn’t over.
After the Governors thwarted a Lawmen threat in the fourth inning in a beautifully executed double play — Cal Melendez to Andrew Marrero to Jorge Velez at first — the Lawmen scored two in the fifth to take the lead.
In their part of the inning, however, having scored one run, left fielder Elias Reid then walked and stole second. Again, stealing on the Lawmen set up the Governors’ scoring.
Then catcher Darlin Flete came to bat. Coach Angel Ramos, down the third base line, gave him the bunt sign.
Angel Galindez releasing a fast ball at Friday’s game.
Either Flete didn’t see the sign or, as Ramos said after the game, he saw it but didn’t remember it.
That was enough for the coach. He called time, took the bat from Flete’s hands and gave it to substitute Elvin Perez.
Perez knew the sign. After one attempt, which he fouled off, he laid a bunt down between the mound and third. He was thrown out by a step, but the small ball maneuver advanced Reid to third.
“You did your job,” Coach Chris Roberts said to Perez as he trotted back to the dugout.
And then some, because Reid soon scored as the umpire waved him in on the pitcher’s next balk .
That gave the Governors the 3 – 2 lead. They were able to hold the lead despite a strong Lawmen threat in the top of the seventh, which was thwarted by closer Fernando Doria’s clutch pitching and a nifty catch of a foul near the dugout by the long arm of first baseman Velez.
Perez, a substitute, had spent much of the game retrieving foul balls. (Lots of the players perform that chore, including the starters.) He was pleased with what he had done with the bat this day.
“I feel good,” he said. “I made a contribution.”
“We need to learn to win when we don’t hit,” said Coach Ramos to the team in their huddle-up immediately after the game. “Today we took advantage of the other team’s mistakes.”
Next up is a contest Monday afternoon 3:45 at Rice Field against a formidable opponent, Amity High School.
Previous coverage of this season’s Wilbur Cross baseball team:
• He Has A Rice Field Of Dreams
• Cross Crushes Beacon Falls 14 – 1 In Season Opener