Muhls pass biggest test of the season, edge Bulldogs
Gio Cavanna will wake up Sunday with a sore back and a smile on his face.
The Muhlenberg right fielder took a couple for the team Saturday night, literally. Wilson’s hard-throwing Rueben Livingston plunked him square in the back in the second inning. An hour or so later Jake Kope took over for Livingston; his first pitch hit Cavanna in the same exact spot.
It stung, of course, but it ended up hurting the Bulldogs more: It came with the bases loaded, pushing home a run that would be critical in what ended up as a 6-5 Berks League crossover victory for Muhlenberg in the finale of the three-day, seven-game Berks County High School Showcase.
The Berks II-leading Muhls stayed unbeaten and showed they can beat a quality team and quality pitcher in a big game.
“We knew it was going to be tough,” said Cavanna, who drove in runs in each of his final three at-bats. “We came out and did our job.”
The game resembled a rose bush: Full of flowers and thorns. Each side made big plays, and poor ones; each let the other team back in the game.
The Muhls went up a run in the first on a passed ball; they gave back three in the bottom half as staff ace Brad Coley, too amped for the moment, struggled to find the strike zone, walking a couple and eventually wild-pitching a run home.
Back and forth it went. Each team had a two-run lead. Each came back from two down to tie it. Each took something positive away from it.
“This is a nice win,” Muhlenberg coach Brian Kopetsky said of beating the Bulldogs (3-2 Berks I, 4-6) on their home-away-from-home field, and on their Senior Night. “That’s one of the elite programs in the league. They’re a team that you compete with if you’re going to win a county title. It’s Wilson and Mifflin, they’re always there; they’ve always been the big boys.”
The Muhls (10-0) are one of the big boys this season. They swing the bats like crazy. They were on Livingston all night. He had allowed just nine hits in 14 1/3 previous innings but they got to him for seven hits and made consistent contact throughout before he left with two outs in the fifth.
“It’s not a secret,” Kopetsky said. “You throw somebody at us who has some ‘velo,’ we hit the ball. Every team that’s thrown the ball fairly hard, we’ve hit. They’re very confident (hitters).”
The Muhls came in batting .356 as a team and averaging better than seven runs a game. Their competition before Saturday might not have been the greatest but they showed their record, and their standing as the top-ranked team in District 3 among Class 5A teams, is no fluke.
“They belong here,” said Wilson coach Sal Raccuglia, “we’re trying to show that we belong here.”
The defending District 3 Class 6A champion Bulldogs have had a rough first month. They dropped their first four games and have not hit a lick, other than Livingston, the Kent State recruit and perhaps the most feared hitter in the league.
He crushed a double over the third-base bag in the fifth to set up a two-run inning that saw the Bulldogs tie it 5-5. The Muhls, who played an otherwise clean game in the field, helped them out when shortstop Kenay Rodriguez threw away a two-out grounder, allowing Livingston to come home with the tying run.
That cost Coley, who settled down remarkably after the first — he ended up with eight strikeouts — a chance to earn the win.
The ‘W’ went instead to junior Drew Fidler, who was lights-out coming out of the pen. He retired the first six he faced, four by strikeout, gave up a two-out walk to Livingston in the seventh, then punched out the final batter.
“He’s just a guy (who says), give me the ball, in whatever situation,” said Kopetsky. “You need him to close, he’ll close.”
The Muhls have a bunch of gamers, Cavanna right at the top of the list. He totally reworked his swing coming into this season and hasn’t hit well but he came through in the Muhls’ biggest game of the season, reaching base three straight times before driving in the game-winner with a sacrifice fly in the seventh. He also made an outstanding catch, leaning over the wall down the right-field line to steal an out.
“You won’t see anybody play the game harder,” Kopetsky said. “He plays hungry.”
The Bulldogs came from behind twice and were in position for a potential season-changing win but couldn’t nail it down. They lost by a single run for the third time; they lost by two to Berks I-leading Gov. Mifflin at Shillington.
They’re close, but not quite there. They made several really good defensive plays to stay in the game but also ended up giving up four unearned runs. They had more errors (three) than hits (two).
“I keep telling my guys: We’re playing with the best teams,” Raccuglia said. “Mifflin, Muhlenberg. We opened the season against Liberty (a 4-3 loss); they’re 11-1 now. We played right with ’em.
“We’re right there. We have to figure out a way to get into the postseason. We have our fate in front of us, so we still control it. We’re trying to get our kids to believe that.”
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