Box Score
LANCASTER, Pa. – Seventh-ranked West Chester University escaped its PSAC baseball semifinal with an exciting 12-11 victory over California (Pa.) in the first game of the day Thursday at Clipper Magazine Stadium.
West Chester (41-10) advances to the PSAC Championship Game for the fourth time in the last five years where it will face the winner of the other semifinal pitting Kutztown against Mercyhurst. That championship game will be played later Thursday afternoon in the third game of the day.
A Kutztown win would mark the second straight year that the Rams and Bears square off for the baseball title. In fact, all four times over the past five years in which West Chester has reached the PSAC Baseball championship game it has lost to Kutztown.
After sitting through two rain delays totaling 65 minutes, West Chester plated the winning run with two outs in the top of the 11th to send Cal (32-15) home in the postseason tournament, which was switched to a single elimination format due to the plethora of cancellations all week long due to rain.
Kevin McGrath stole second, advanced to third when the catcher’s throw sailed into center field, then raced home with the winning run when the centerfielder’s throw back into the infield went in-between the fielders and rolled harmlessly into the middle of the diamond. McGrath slid in under the late tag from the catcher and was mugged behind home plate by his ecstatic teammates.
“When I got to third, I heard coach yelling ‘Go, go, go’” McGrath said. “I don’t really know what happened, I just broke for home.”
Cal’s players claimed the second base umpire called interference and thought play was stopped.
“Fielder’s interference isn’t a dead ball,” West Chester head coach Greg Mamula said. “[McGrath] is awarded third base, but he can go home at his own risk.”
When play resumed after the second stoppage following the ninth, reliever Sean Welsh (2-1) worked his way out of trouble in the 10th after loading the bases and working a 3-1 count on West Chester’s Kyle Orensky, getting the Rams’ batter to foul out to first base.
Joe Wendle opened the 11th by grounding out to first base unassisted. Sam Phillips then grounded out to third base, before McGrath drew a two-out walk.
Bret Moyer (9-1) pitched the 10th and 11th after the second rain delay to pick up the win. He retired all six batters he faced, striking out two.
“That game felt like a championship game,” Mamula continued. “We were one swing away from winning or losing.”
“It took a team effort to get through that game,” McGrath added. “The biggest thing is to just stay focused [through all of the delays].”
California scored five runs in the sixth and three more in the seventh to erase a seven-run deficit and take an 11-10 lead after seven innings. West Chester came back with a single tally in the bottom of the seventh to knot the game at 11. That’s how things stayed until Cal’s two costly errors in the 11th.
The Vulcans rallied for four runs off of Rams starter David Slusser in that fateful sixth inning before he exited with two outs. Carmen Daddario came on and did not retire a batter before exiting with two runners on and one more run across. Closer Eric Carmichael got West Chester out of the inning and pitched through the ninth.
Cal broke the ice in the top of the first inning with a two-out, two-run homer to right-center field by Shayne Busti. However, West Chester responded with three runs in its first at bats to take the lead.
From there, the Golden Rams built its 10-3 lead with one run in the second, four in the fourth and two more in the fifth.
Matt Cotellese finished 3-for-5 with four RBI and two runs scored. He passed former Kutztown star John Rozich’s PSAC record of 193 career RBI while tying former Bear Ryan Loper’s record of 219 career games played in the conference. He raised his batting average to .452 on the season.
Charlie Kelly and Nick Spisak each hit two-run homers with Kelly’s coming in the fourth and Spisak in the fifth.
Blair Dameron had an RBI ground out in the first inning to take over sole possession of first place on the school’s single-season RBI chart with his conference-leading 64th run batted in this spring.
