Castleton, Vt. — His team had just scored four runs in the seventh inning to go up by a pair, but Jarrod Grassi, coach of the White River Junction Post 84 senior American Legion baseball team, was grimly realistic on Tuesday as his team came up again during the eighth against Brattleboro Post 5.
“This game is not over,” Grassi said, slapping a helmet on his shaven pate and striding toward the third-base coach’s box. His team faced elimination in the Vermont state tournament contest at Castleton State on this, the event’s fourth day of competition.
The coach was right. Boy, oh boy, was he right. It took 11 innings and the winning run scored when White River Junction’s Austin Gaudette was hit with a pitch with the bases loaded for a 5-4 triumph. His teammates rushed out of the dugout in joyous disbelief, a game of myriad plot twists decided when an inside offering grazed Gaudette’s jersey near his stomach.
“If you had asked me for 100 ways this game could have ended, that wouldn’t have been one of them,” said Grassi, whose team improved to 18-4 and has won 15 of its last 16 contests. “You can either be tough and wear that pitch or jump out of the way.
“Good teams are tough and we’re going to wear those pitches. You have to do whatever it takes, especially when your season is on life support.”
Said Gaudette: “I just kind of stood there. It skimmed me. Earlier in the season, umpires have called balls on us for not getting out of the way and I didn’t move at all.”
The result means Post 84 returns to Castleton today for another elimination game, this time at 1 p.m. against Rutland Post 31. The winner of that matchup faces Brattleboro at 4 p.m. for the state title and a berth in the New England regional tournament next weekend. Should that team be White River Junction, it would be the third time it’s faced Brattleboro in the tournament.
“Everyone’s pitching is depleted at this point so it comes down to swinging the bats,” said Grassi, whose team lost to Post 5 on Sunday. “I have every confidence that we can swing them, but will we?
“Guys are tired and sore but we’re going to have to scratch a few innings of pitching out of some people who don’t feel great. Because if we don’t win two tomorrow, they’ve got a long time to rest.”
Post 84’s final piece of good fortune on Tuesday came only a minute or so after a demoralizing mistake. With runners on second and third base with no outs, Grassi called for a suicide squeeze play, sending Steve Cerrone charging toward home as soon as the Brattleboro pitcher began his windup.
Problem was, batter Seth Balch had missed the sign and didn’t square to bunt. He watched the pitch and luckily for his team, Cerrone read the play as it developed, slid to a halt partway down the third-base line and safely retreated to the bag.
Grassi turned away in disbelief and curses flew from the Post 84 dugout. Balch then bunted on his own but Cerrone again came partway down the line before deciding not to risk a play at the plate after Balch was retired at first.
Moving from the on-deck circle and toward the plate, Gaudette thought he, too, might be ordered to participate in a suicide squeeze. Grassi, however, trusted the right fielder to hit away. The inside pitch made that decision moot, however, and Gaudette looked a little stunned at how events had unfolded when discussing them a few minutes after the game.
“I was wicked nervous,” he said. “We thought we had the game won after we scored four runs in the seventh, but we should have been just playing and trying to put up more runs.”
Brattleboro, playing as the visitors after a pregame coin flip, took a 2-0 lead during the fourth inning off White River Junction starting pitcher Jacob Perkins. He was replaced for the fifth by his younger brother, Hunter, who threw the next four frames and was sharp until, suddenly, he was not.
Post 84 used three hits, two walks and two hit batsmen to go up, 4-2, after seven innings. The big hit was delivered by Jordy Allard, whose double scored Cerrone and Jacob Perkins with the inning’s second and third runs.
“Our energy was sky-high, but you can’t coast after that,” Grassi said. “We celebrated too early and you can’t do that.”
White River Junction was two outs from a nine-inning victory, but Hunter Perkins hit a batter, then unleashed an errant pickoff throw to first base, allowing his foe to reach third. The next batter struck out, but the pitch bounded away from the plate and Brattleboro had men on first and third.
A walk loaded the bases and a fielder’s choice and a single tied the game at 4-4. Post 84 stranded a runner in the ninth inning and two more during the 10th. Its half of the 11th began with a Cerrone single and continued with a Jacob Perkins double and an intentional walk of Allard.
“If you want to win this tournament, you need to be good and you need things to go your way,” Grassi said. “Today it was getting hit by a pitch.”
The coach said he might start Dylan Spencer on the mound today. Although not the team’s front-line hurler, Spencer is fresh and that counts for a lot at this stage. He normally plays second base, but was replaced there on Tuesday by Ryland Richardson, whose strong play suggested he’ll be there for the rest of the tournament.
“Dylan is not healthy and he’s struggling at the plate,” Grassi said of a player who’s battled a leg injury this summer. “But if we can get three or four innings out of him, that’s three or four that other kids don’t have to pitch.”
White River Junction had nine hits, three by Gaudette and two each by Cerrone, Smith and Jacob Perkins.
Notes: Post 84 center fielder Codi Smith has decided not to attend Lasell College in Newton, Mass., and instead accompany Jacob Perkins to Lyndon State to play for the Hornets next spring. … White River Junction assistant coach John O’Hara missed the game to attend to family matters back home. However, he was on the phone with scorekeeper Shannon Spencer when the winning run scored. … Gaudette started Tuesday, his first day of competition at the tournament. He had been camping in Maine with his father at a remote location with no Internet service. “We drove into town each day to check the scores,” Gaudette said. “I was hoping they’d keep winning so I could make it back to play.” … Tensions between the teams flared in the form of trash talk and a play at third base where a Post 84 player purposely slid late into a Post 5 fielder at third base. Grassi chastised him and apologized to his Brattleboro counterpart after the inning.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.