Mistakes Fordham Prep didn’t make all season came out Friday night – most of them in the first inning.
Misplayed bunts, errors and mental miscues marked a disappointing loss for the fourth-seeded Rams in a 9-2 loss to No. 6 Iona Prep in the CHSAA Class AA baseball intersectional finals at St. John’s University.
“We came out tentative,” Fordham star Andrew Velazquez said. “You could feel it. We didn’t bounce back from those errors.”
The first five batters reached base for Iona Prep (18-6) in the first inning and all five of them scored. Dan Fischer led off with a bunt single that Fordham starter Steve Fondu threw away. Jack McDermott reached on another bunt. Pat Decea had an RBI single and Sam Garito had another bunt single.
It all added up to a nightmarish first inning for the Rams (16-9) and Fondu, who had been so effective during the playoffs.
“I guess people got caught up in the moment, got a little scared in the beginning,” Velazquez said.
Fordham really never recovered. The Rams had multiple opportunities, but never cashed in. Most of those chances were nullified by multiple double plays turned by Iona Prep shortstop Vinny DeMaria. Robbie Lynch and Zach Leone grounded into 6-4-3 double plays in the second and fourth innings, respectively. Then Paul Pache and Ryan Mahoney lined into doubles plays in the fifth and sixth.
“We were hitting the ball hard,” Velazquez said. “They were at the wrong place at the wrong time for us.”
Iona Prep starter Tim McCarthy ended up going the entire way, giving up two runs and scattering eight hits.
“He was smarter than he was in the last game,” Fordham coach Pat Deane said of McCarthy.
Fordham scratched across a run in the first on Leone’s sacrifice fly that scored Velazquez. Jack Becker, the ace pitcher who has missed the entire season with an arm injury, came up with an RBI single in a feel-good moment.
But those were few and far between for Fordham Prep, which had to win Friday night and then again Sunday to take home the crown in the league’s double-elimination format. The Rams did just that three years ago when they won the title by beating Archbishop Stepinac.
It was still an excellent season for the Bronx school. Fordham Prep won the CHSAA Bronx/Westchester division and advanced all the way to the finals. Velazquez became the first-ever athlete taken from the school in the MLB First-Year Player Draft when he went in the seventh round to the Diamondbacks.
It just wasn’t quite the ending the Rams wanted.
“It was mistakes we haven’t made all year,” Deane said.