Baseball: Playing as 'Team,' Chiefs Win 12 of 14

Team.

Webster defines it as “a group of people constituting one side in a contest or competition.” You could also define "team" by looking at the dozen or so guys who wear the baseball uniform for the Hopatcong Chiefs.

“What I see now I started seeing at the Vernon game earlier in the season—characteristics of playing for the guy next to you," head coach Chris Buglovsky said. "Not what have I done, but what have we done. The individual numbers show that we’re doing well but they don’t reflect the kind of team we really are. Each guy has done something in a game to propel us to wins."

According to senior Josh Bishop, the team thing doesn’t end when the players walk off the field. Most of these guys have been playing baseball together since they were 7 or 8 years old. They are friends. They hang out together, especially on Friday nights. They confide in each other. But most of all they are there for each other—especially on the field.

“If one of us is having a bad game it doesn’t matter, we can always pick each other up,” said Bishop, who roams right field when he’s not on the mound.  Currently, Bishop owns a 5-2 record and is hitting at a .460 clip. Hitting in the lead-off position he has 22 runs scored and just a couple of games ago hit a grand slam home run.

“The season is going good. It’s going great. It’s going our way,” said Bishop.

Bishop, like most of his teammates, doesn’t know his individual stats. When asked about his batting average, his runs scored, his own pitching record, he deferred to Buglovsky for assistance. Buglovsky is like a walking scorebook, able to rattle off everyone’s batting average, RBIs and runs scored. But he emphasizes that stats are about what a player has accomplished in the past, not what that player will do in the future. “We’ve gotten to where we are with the mentality that your individual stats do not mean more than the team’s success,” Buglovsky said.

Joe LoBue said he couldn’t agree more. When asked about his stats he said he had no idea and he doesn’t want to know. He’s having an all-star season, batting .480 with eight dingers, 25 RBI’s and 10 doubles. He said he feels the season is coming along “pretty well,” and doesn’t want to change the routine of things. (He knows his stats will be published but he said he’s just not going to read this story.)

Catcher DJ Ross attributes the team’s success to the pitching, which he says, so far, is “on target.” He also mentioned the team’s hitting. “Last year we were struggling all year with our hitting. Not this year,” he said. Ross, unbeknownest to him, leads the team in hitting with a .500 batting average, five home runs, 29 RBI’s and 29 runs scored. When asked about his defensive stats, specifically about throwing runners out on steals, Ross couldn’t come up with a single play. “No one tries to steal on DJ,” said Buglovsky, smiling.

Both LoBue and Ross cite the game against Caldwell as one of their favorites so far this season.  “It was a back-and-forth game. In the past, we wouldn’t have come out on top but this year we did,” said Ross, who went 3-for-4 with three doubles and three RBI’s in the game. “I saw our team differently in that game than I saw in every other game. We came with the attitude to win the game. It’s a good feeling winning those close competitive games,” added LoBue who was 3-for-3 with a walk, a triple and a double and four runs scored in the game.

Buglovsky said the season didn’t start out very well. “It didn’t start off the way we wanted. We were 0-2-1. We were concentrating more on what the other team was doing,” he said. Since then the Chiefs have posted a 12-2 record. “We’re excited. We’ve got a sense of urgency about us. With seven seniors on the team we don’t want to have any regrets. We want to prolong the ending,” Buglovskysaid .

Buglosvsky said he thinks the Chiefs will get a three-seed in the North I, Group II section. Locally, Lenape Valley and Hackettstown will also be seeded high and might be an opponent sometime down the road. The Chiefs have lost to each of them once so far this season. But Coach Buglosvky, ever the optimist, believes that on any given day, “anyone can beat anyone” and he just might have the team that’s able to do that.