Sals Baseball Wins Season Opener

John+Andreoli+after+hitting+his+first+inning+home+run+against+Mount+Pleseant.+

John Andreoli after hitting his first inning home run against Mount Pleseant.

Tom Cellucci, Editor

On Saturday Salesianum won its season opener against Mount Pleasant High School 11-9. This game came done to wire with some late game heroics by John Andreoli. Both teams during the contest showed some early season signs of rust from the winter. However, Sals was able to come out in front.

Let’s review the game! In the first inning on the very first pitch of the season John Andreoli hit a home run. Salesianum would then go on to score 2 more in their half of the first thanks to a double by Zack Miller. Mount would respond in their half of the first with a run of their own. Salesianum would then get one more run in the tool of the second. However, Mount Pleasant would explode in their half of the second with 3 triples to put them up 6-4. Salesianum would respond back with a run of their own in the top of the third making the score 6-5. The score would remain the same until the bottom of sixth when Mount Pleasant would breakout for 3 more runs thanks to a barrage of triples again. This put Sals down 9-4 after 6 innings. However Sals baseball would fight back in their half of the seventh. In the bottom of the seventh Zack Miller led off the inning with a single and have his brothers follow suit. After a few hits and walks Sals would find themselves down 9-8 when John “the bad man” Andreoli stepped up to the plate. He would work the count to a 2-2 count. He would proceed to foul off two more pitches. Then he launched a home run over the left field wall to give Sals the lead 11-9. Alex Hinton would shut down Mount in the bottom half of the inning to secure the win for Sals.
While Sals may have come away with the win there were some serious flaws that they need to tighten up before they face harder competition. For example, on more than one occasion the outfielders missed their cut off men giving Mount extra bases and at times extra runs. Against tougher competition this could be a death sentence for this team because those teams will take the extra bases and turn them into runs. The outfielders also had a tough time reading fly balls which led to them giving up many triples. They will need to fix these mistakes before they get burned. However, the team responded well to being down by a huge deficit and made an amazing come back. The team overall though came away with the win and will hopefully build upon it.