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12-run inning leads Jeannette baseball past rival GCC

By: HSSN Staff
Thursday, April 26, 2018 | 9:42 PM

As the fifth inning drained into the sixth Jeannette trailed by three runs, had just five hits and began to get the feeling that maybe this wasn't its day.

Then the home half of the sixth happened.

And what an inning it was.

The Jayhawks exploded, Greensburg Central Catholic imploded and a Section 2-A showdown between county baseball rivals that hadn't met since last year's WPIAL title game took an enormous turn in Jeannette's favor.

The Jayhawks hit and hit … and hit some more.

In the sixth, No. 4 Jeannette sent 18 batters to the plate, scored 12 runs as 11 consecutive batters reached base and swiftly pulled away from the No. 2 Centurions for a 15-7 victory Thursday at Buster Clarkson Field.

“That was the craziest inning I have ever been in,” Jeannette's Tre Cunningham said. “Ever.”

Jeannette (7-1, 5-1), which beat GCC (6-3, 6-1) just once in three tries last season — 7-3 in 12 innings for the WPIAL championship — had nine hits in the sixth to post its sixth straight win.

Also in the frame that was GCC's nightmare, there were six wild pitches and three hit batsmen, and the Jayhawks did the majority of their damage with one out.

“We always preach good at-bats,” Jeannette coach Marcus Clarkson said. “I hate guys going up there and swinging at any old thing. The way the high school game is now, you want to get the pitch-count up and get pitchers out of the game. I thought we were going to break through. I didn't think we'd break through with an inning like that. We have a good hitting team. I was proud of our at-bats early, and we finished the job late.”

Cunningham went 3 for 4 with a double and two RBIs and also picked up the pitching win as he worked six innings and struck out nine before exiting with 97 pitches.

GCC starting pitcher James Rice, who added two doubles, two RBIs, and a highlight-reel catch despite colliding with teammate Tom Voelker in center, also flirted with 100 pitches and was pulled in the sixth after Jeannette loaded the bases.

Staff No. 1 Antonio Cavallo, not expecting to pitch at all Thursday, replaced him and the Jayhawks went to work. Ricky Pitzer singled in a run and Tyler Elliott and Seth Howard followed with two-run singles to give Jeannette a 9-6 advantage.

Howard came on later to pitch the seventh.

GCC sent reliever Joel LoNigro to the mound with the bases loaded and trailing 11-6.

“Antonio is a starter, Joel is a starter; them trying to come on in relief makes it a little more difficult to find the zone,” GCC coach Dennis Reist said. “We'll get back to work and take care of it. We have to put this behind us. There's nothing you can do about it; it's over. There are things we can correct, and we'll correct those.”

Elliott's single gave Jeannette a 7-6 lead, its first since 2-0 in the opening inning.

Cunningham struck out four of the first six batters before the Centurions began to make contact against him. A few defensive miscues by Jeannette aided GCC's cause.

Jeannette's bats, though, helped earn Cunningham the win.

“We always fight,” Cunningham said. “Regardless of the circumstances, we're always playing our hardest. We just kept playing and we kept hitting the ball and they got wild. That's how we did it.”

The E-ZPass lane remained open, and the Jayhawks kept the base paths moving with hit-fueled emotion.

“I've had those innings against us (in the past) where it happened the other way,” Clarkson said. “With them, we know they're not going to quit. There is no lead that we could have got that would have been safe … keep running, keep taking extra bases, have good at-bats, and we did that.”

Wild pitches and walks compounded the inning for GCC, which found itself down 14-6 after run-scoring hits from Cunningham, Drake Petrillo and Zander Malik, who launched a drive to deep left that went for a double but probably would have been out of most fields.

“I expected the first four innings to go the way it did, and then once we got to Tre, he's a fabulous pitcher, we just had to settle down,” Reist said. “We just couldn't get that second out in the sixth inning.”

Elliott went 2 for 4 with two RBIs, Petrillo had two hits including a double and Malik went 2 for 3 with two RBIs.

Bryce Kurpiel had three hits for GCC, which had a three-game winning streak snapped.

The teams are scheduled to play again next Friday under the lights at Hempfield Park. Start time is 7 p.m.

Both teams return to the field Friday, though, for section games as they try to get their schedules back on track.

Bill Beckner Jr. is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at bbeckner@tribweb.com or via Twitter @BillBeckner.

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