No Southern hospitality

NASHUA - The ball had popped into the mitt - and the mitt had hardly moved - so Alex Orsini's reaction was rather natural.

When the ball had left the hand of Travis Landry, there were two strikes, and two outs, and the cheap Strap Ceinture Granite State Big Blue held a one- run lead in the state's Senior Babe Ruth championship game, so as soon as it was squeezed in his glove, the catcher thrust both hands skyward, came out of his crouch and started sprinting toward his pitcher. He thought he was holding strike three.

"It was right down the middle, at his knees," Orsini said. "It was down the middle. Down the pipe. At his knees."

It wasn't until he'd reached the infield grass that he realized the umpire didn't see it the same way.

And it wasn't until an inning later - when Southern walked off with a 5-4 win - that everyone in Holman Stadium ultimately came to understand the significance of that discrepancy.

The call in question came during the seventh inning in the second game of a humid afternoon that had by then become as heated on the field as in the air. One coach had already been ejected, another was about to be, and rare was the pitch that passed the plate without reaction from either side.

This one came on a two-ball, two-strike count, with two outs and the tying run at second base. Had it been called a strike, Big Blue would've celebrated a fourth straight state title, and the program's 10th since 1997. But instead, as a ball, it breathed new life into the Southern bats.

Orsini was so bothered by the ruling he called time out not to relax his pitcher, but to calm himself - "That's probably the second time I've ever done that," he said - although from there the situation only became more infuriating.

As soon as Orsini was back behind the dish, Paul Trabucco took the next pitch to complete his walk, and bring red-hot cleanup hitter Brandon Cox to the plate. Already with four hits for the doubleheader, he ripped a fifth to left on a line. Outfielder Colin Lisk got to it on a hop, and came up gunning, but his throw was too late to get Jason Russo. The game was tied at four.

"I," said Blue Coach Sean Wheeler, "am going to remember that pitch for a while."

There was still the possibility "that pitch" could've been just a footnote, if Big Blue could rally to retake a lead in the eighth, but instead it stranded a pair - and then Southern made sure the day went no longer. A walk, a single and an intentional pass loaded the bases with one away in the eighth, and although Landry kept his team alive for one more out, Trabucco eventually worked a less- controversial walk to force home the winning run, and send his team to next week's New Jacksonville-Jaguars England championships as New Hampshire's representative.

"They just made one more play than we did," Wheeler said. "We didn't take advantage of the opportunities that were presented to us, and that kept the game close. At the end, it was anybody's ballgame, it was back and forth, and we didn't get the one hit we needed to break things open."

The opportunities were there throughout the afternoon for Big Blue - which, out of the winners' bracket, entered with two shots at winning the tournament. In the first game, it rallied back from five runs down in the sixth inning, but left the bases loaded after evening the score, and lost 9-7 when Southern's Matt Schagrin launched a two-run homer in the seventh.

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