Bears Continue to Roll With a Rout of Dobbs Ferry
the bat in Friday’s win.
The Briarcliff baseball team made its annual visit north to Fishkill for a night game at Dutchess Stadium on Friday and afterwards head coach John Schrader predicted it wouldn’t be the Bears’ last trip there this season.
“I am extremely confident in this group and I would expect to be playing back here at Dutchess Stadium on May 27th,” he said, alluding to the 2017 Class B sectional championship game, scheduled to take place at the minor league home of the Hudson Valley Renegades.
Schrader had just watched as his Bears cruised to their fourth consecutive victory to start the season, a 9-4 win over Dobbs Ferry highlighted by the pitching of Spencer McCann, who hurled six shutout innings and struck out eight on a chilly, soggy evening under the lights.
The only drama for McCann came in the game’s first inning as Conor McKeown led off with a single and Ryota Kawanishi followed with a walk. McKeown would eventually get thrown out at the plate after a chopper to short by Andrew McKeown, and McCann got out of trouble with a big strikeout that stranded a pair of runners.
“No, I was pretty confident that Spencer would do a job like he did,” said Schrader, asked later if he was surprised the junior right-hander escaped unscathed in the first inning. “I thought he pitched great. He threw six innings, kept the pitch count low. He actually did a nice job on the hitting end as well. He’s come a long way. He’s working hard and he’s doing really well.”
The Bears did go down in order in the bottom of the first, but they provided McCann with a run in the second. Jake Hardy led off with a walk, then moved to second when Luca Lombardi ripped a line single to right. Hardy wound up scoring on a sacrifice fly to center field by McCann. Lombardi, though, was soon thrown out at home trying to score on a single to left off the bat of John Gross.
The ball never left the infield when Dobbs Ferry batted against McCann in the top of the third. The Bears added to their lead by scoring a pair of runs in the bottom of the inning. Danny Huegel led off with a single, stole second and then scored when Joe Scanga faked a bunt before singling to right-center field. Scanga stole second, moved to third on an infield out and came in on Jack Ryan’s RBI single to right.
Briarcliff’s lead grew to 6-0 in the bottom of the fourth inning with some help from the Eagles. Noah Campo wound up with a leadoff triple when his long fly to left was misplayed. McCann then crushed the first pitch he saw over the center fielder’s head for a triple that easily drove home Campo. Two outs later, with runners on the corners, a fly ball to left field by Jake Brown was dropped, scoring two more runs.
An inning later, the Bears built their lead over the Eagles to 7-0. Hardy continued his torrid hitting to start the new season by leading off with a line-drive single into center field. Two outs later, McCann was hit by a pitch and Gross followed by ripping a 3-2 pitch to left for an RBI single.
The Eagles threatened in the top of the sixth when Kawanishi led off with a single and John Archer walked. But McCann quickly got out of trouble, inducing Andrew McKeown to hit into a 6-4-3 double play and then getting a called third strike. Briarcliff soon tacked on its final two runs with Hardy, who now has an astounding 18 RBI in five games, blasting a long run-scoring triple to the gap in left-center field and then trotting home on a wild pitch.
With McCann removed after six innings and 76 pitches, Dobbs Ferry took advantage in the seventh inning and scored its four runs. Relief pitcher Brendon Julie had trouble locating the strike zone and yielded four walks and a hit. He was replaced by Hardy, who finished the game by getting a double play, surrendering a long double and then inducing a ground ball to shortstop for the final out.
“As a team as a whole, I think we’re doing a great job,” said Schrader, whose players followed their rout of Dobbs Ferry with a 13-7 win over Blind Brook the next day. “They’re great kids. They really honestly all buy in from the beginning. They’re focused and they’re looking for big things this year. The section championships are back here this year. So maybe we’ll be playing there at the end of May. We’ll see.”
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
Read more of Andy’s full bio here.
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