On Monday, the big winner in Eastlake was "If Necessary"
Two teams needed to win two games to make it to the D3 Championship. And they both pulled it off on a long day and night of baseball
Action got underway at 10 am Eastern Time in Eastlake, Ohio, as the day when the final two teams in the Division III baseball tournament were going to be determined.
The opening game matched defending champion and eight seed Lynchburg against fifth seed Misericordia. Lynchburg needed just one win to move on and Misericordia would have to win the morning game and then come back again in the afternoon to move on.
The Cougars were short on pitching and gambled by starting the team’s best pitcher, Matt Lanzendorfer, who happens to also be the team’s closer. Lanzendorfer started off with two shutout innings, but Lynchburg hit him for two runs on three hits and a walk in the third to take a 2-0 lead.
Misericordia got one run back in the fourth, but were still trailing 2-1 into the seventh. Lynchburg thought they tacked on a run on a throwing error by Misericordia, but a video review showed that the Lynchburg batter was running inside the line when he got hit by a throw. Misericordia worked its way out of the inning.
In the top of the eighth, Misericordia tied the game on a single, stolen base, and another single. In the top of the ninth, Jared Hoffman came off the bench for a 2-out RBI single to give the Cougars a 3-2. Starting pitcher Joe Valenti pitched the last 2 ½ innings for his 12th win of the season.
The two teams would play a winner take all after the next game, between Salve Regina and Wisconsin-Whitewater. Like the other game, Wisconsin-Whitewater needed two wins to move on. And Whitewater had done so in the super-regional against Wisconin-La Crosse.
Salve Regina had a 2-1 lead in the fifth when Whitewater DH Sean Cootway hit a bases loaded triple to put his team up 4-2. Salve Regina kept chipping away at the lead, but Whitewater would answer and eventually stretche the lead out to 7-4 in the eighth, which would end up being the final score. So this game was also headed to an “if necessary” second game.
For their second game, Misericordia was pretty much out of any fresh arms, so they called on lefty Max Oliver, who hadn’t pitched since April 21. As baseball frequently does, an unlikely hero was created on this day as Oliver tossed a complete game, holding Lynchburg to just one run on six hits.
Misericordia scratched out two runs each in the seventh and eighth innings to pick up a 5-1 win and move on to the championship series starting on Wednesday.
[digression]
Misericordia University was originally called College Misericordia. The school was founded by the Sisters of Mercy (Misericordia is the Latin word for mercy) in 1925 in Dallas, Pennsylvania, which is well, sort of near Scranton.
The town of Dallas is named after Alexander Dallas, who was a Secretary of the Treasury in the James Madison Administration. He also was the first official court reporter for the Supreme Court. That is, he was responsible for printing and disseminating all of the court’s published opinions.
According to his Wikipedia article, Dallas was really bad at being a court reporter:
The volumes of reports, of which he produced only four, were faulted for being incomplete, inaccurate, and extremely tardy. The landmark ruling in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) which prompted the Eleventh Amendment, was not reported by Dallas until five years later, well after the Amendment had been ratified. Later, he wrote: "I have found such miserable encouragement for my reports that I have determined to call them all in, and devote them to the rats in the State-House
This is amazing because the Supreme Court barely did anything in its early days and would sometimes go a whole year without hearing a case.
Alexander Dallas’ son George would become Vice President under James Polk.
The city of Dallas, Texas is not named for Alexander Dallas and the reason for its name is still in dispute.
[end digression]
Salve Regina had a second chance to make it to the final in a late starting game against Whitewater. If Salve Regina won, it would set up a final series between two Catholic universties both run by the same religious order, the Sisters of Mercy. 1However, Whitewater had other ideas.
The game was tied 2-2 into the eighth when Whitewater freshman catcher Aaron Holland homered. The Warhawks were able to tack on another run in the eighth and yet again in the ninth. The 5-2 lead held up as Salve Regina got the tying run to the plate in the ninth, but there were was no magic.
And the final series is set Misericordia versus Wisconsin Whitewater. It starts on Tuesday at 4 pm PT. The series is a best of three. Game two will not be played until Thursday starting at 8 am PT. A Game 3, if necessary, would also be played on Thursday about 50 minutes after the end of Game 2. The series was originally scheduled to start on Wednesday, but Game 1 was pushed up because of an unfavorable weather forecast for that day.
Wisconsin Whitewater will be looking for its third baseball championship. They last won in 2014 when they beat Emory in the championship. This is Misericordia’s first trip to the championship game, possibly in any sport.2
I didn’t check a lot of sports, but in Division I Men’s basketball, there have been only two all Catholic championship games and neither were from schools of the same order. In 1957, Jesuit school San Francisco beat Christian Brothers La Salle.And in 1985, Augustinian Villanova beat Jesuit Georgetown. Only one Catholic college has ever won a Division I College World Series, Holy Cross back in 1952.
If Misericordia has ever won anything, the school certainly isn’t big on talking about it. Wisconsin-Whitewater has won a lot of championships in various sports.