Posted in: Sports 
By Rich Maclone

     One of the greatest ballgames in recent history capped off a great season for the Cape Cod Baseball League on Tuesday night in Falmouth as the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox won their third championship in the last four years with a two-game sweep of Falmouth. The clincher was an absolute gem of a pitcher’s duel as Trevor Holder (Georgia) of Y-D squared off against Falmouth’s Christian Friedrich (East Kentucky). The two hurlers matched goose eggs for several innings before Friedrich gave the game over to his bullpen in the sixth.

     Zeroes would continue to fill the scoreboard until the top of the eighth as the Red Sox plated two runs in an unconventional fashion to take a 2-0 lead. Those would be the only runs of the night as two Y-D pitchers combined to two-hit the Commodores. 
Reliever Brett Graffy blanked the Red Sox for the first two innings he worked, but ran into trouble to start the eighth as he walked Buster Posey (Florida State) and then surrendered a double to Jason Castro (Stanford) down the right field line to put two runners in scoring position with no outs.

     The Commodores went to the bullpen and summoned big Luke Burnett (Louisiana Tech) to put out the fire. The six-foot, eight inch fireballer, whose fastball topped out at 97-miles per hour, gave Falmouth a glimmer of hope as he struck out one of Y-D’s biggest bats, Gordan Beckham (Georgia) for the first out of the inning. The Commodores then opted to intentionally walk Aaron Luna (Rice) to load the bases and set up a potential inning-ending double play.

     Y-D manager Scott Pickler had a trick up his sleeve for Falmouth, though. He sent Nick Romero (San Diego State) to the plate to bunt in Posey. Romero somehow was able to get the bat on a tailing inside fastball and perfectly got the ball down the first base line, perfectly executing the suicide squeeze to plate the first run of the game. Burnett would later say that he knew that the squeeze play was on, which is why he threw the ball so far inside, but that there was nothing that he or his teammates could do about it because the Red Sox had pulled it off excellently.

     Had that been the only run to score in that inning Falmouth would have felt that it had a shot to tie things up, but a mix-up between Burnett and his catcher, Kevin Dubler (Illinois State) proved costly as the backstop did not grab an outside fastball that went to the backstop with Colin Cowgill (Arkansas) at the plate. That allowed Castro to score from third and gave Y-D a seemingly insurmountable two-run advantage. Burnett would come back to strike out Cowgill and then get the next batter to foul out, but the damage was done and Y-D had itself all the runs it would need.

     With the lead in hand, Holder, who would be named the MVP of the playoffs, made quick work of the Commodores in the bottom of the eighth, setting the side down in order. That finished off a game that saw him allow just a second inning single and two walks in the seventh to Falmouth. The winning pitcher struck out 10 Commodores over his dominant outing. Nick Cassavechia (Baylor) picked up the save by striking out the side in the ninth to finish off the championship for Y-D. The closer did give up a one-out double to Phil Carey (Winthrop), which gave the Commodores some hope, but he then slammed the door by getting David Adams (Virginia) and Aja Barto (Tulane) on strikes to end things.

     The Red Sox had defeated the Commodores in game one by a an 8-2 score at Red Wilson Field, scoring four times over the first two innings and breezing to the victory from that point.

     The Commodores had advanced to the finals by knocking out the Bourne Braves in two games, sweeping the west division finals. Falmouth captured game one at Doran Park, 7-2, behind the league’s best starting pitcher during the regular season, Aaron Crow (Missouri). 

     Crow gave up just one run on six hits over six innings of work, striking out seven Braves along the way. DJ Mitchell, the Bourne starter, was roughed up for six runs over his six innings of work, as Falmouth got one in the second on an RBI hit by Carey. In the third the Commodores opened things up, going up 5-0 with a four-run outburst.

     The Braves would score single runs in both the sixth and seventh innings, but never got closer than a 6-2 deficit. Josh Satin drove in a run in the sixth for the Braves and then Ben Guez homered for the team’s run in the seventh.

     In game two, the Commodores once again got off to a fast start, taking a 5-1 lead after four innings. Bourne struck first as Kevin Hoef led off the game with a homer, but the Commodores would score three in the third and two in the fourth. The Braves got one back in the sixth on a Ben Pruitt RBI hit.

     In the eighth the Braves had a great chance to tie things up, but could only plate one run as they left the bases loaded in their last-gasp effort.