Millburn 8U wins thriller with walk-off hit

The Millburn 8 & under travel team continues to play exciting baseball. On Saturday, neighboring rival South Orange/Maplewood (SOM) visited Gero Park to play the home game of their home & away series. Earlier this summer, Millburn beat SOM 17-10 in South Orange.

The game began inauspiciously for the Millburn travel team as three errors on the first three SOM batters led to three runs, but then Millburn came right back with renewed focus. With a runner at first, SOM's Luke McCarthy grounded to Millburn 2nd baseman Matthew Bigman, who flipped to first for the easy out, but then SOM's Dexter Ellis tried to advance from 2nd to 3rd. First baseman Adam Chung fired to Third Baseman Jonah Callahan, who applied the tag for Millburn's first double play of the season. Pitcher Aiden Treue then promptly struck out SOM's Noah Fryatt to end the inning. Millburn responded with a run in the bottom of the first, but SOM came right back and loaded the bases in the second. With two outs, rightfielder Collin Du made a diving catch (pictured) to end the inning. Millburn scored two more in the bottom of the second to even the game at 3-3 foreshadowing a see-saw battle for the rest of the day.

In the top of the third, SOM added one run, but Harry Eller used his tantalizing yet deceptive change-up to mow down the next three batters. 4-3 for SOM at that point. In the bottom of the third, Millburn struck back forcefully with five runs, led by the battered and bruised Ashankit Khanna, who took another ball for the team with a hit-by-pitch RBI with the bases loaded. For those of you scoring at home, Khanna was once again an on-base machine reaching base in all four of his at-bats. Additionally, he now has been plunked 7 times in 32 plate appearances, a shocking 22% of his trips to the plate. 8-4 for Millburn after three innings. The lead would not last long though with SOM responding with five runs in the top of the 4th capped by a long triple to the outfield fence by SOM's Jack Leibensperger. 9-8 at the middle of the fourth for SOM. Millburn responded in the bottom of the fourth as Alex Grapkowski ripped a pitch down the third base line to score one. Grapkowski then scored himself to take back the lead 10-9 at the end of the fourth inning. Grapkowski has picked up the pace of late. Today, he was 3 for 5 with a double and 3 RBIs in some clutch situations. More on that later.

Coming into the sixth and final inning, Millburn led 15-13. By that point, the lead had already changed eight times in this thriller. SOM struck quickly in the sixth and scored three runs on their first three batters. With the lead over Millburn at 16-15, they then loaded the bases. Unfortunately, reliever Jack Dufner was unavailable for this game. Instead, Millburn went to hard-throwing righty Ashankit Khanna. Luckily for Millburn, all his hit-by-pitches this season have been to his left side, rather than his precious flame-throwing right arm. Khanna entered the game with the bases full and promptly struck out the next two batters. Heading to the bottom of the sixth, Millburn needed two runs, but SOM quickly erased two batters and the plucky team was down to their last out. Not to be stopped, Mac Ucko & John Lischer both singled up the middle to occupy 1st and 2nd with just one precious out left. Once again, Grapkowski came through in the clutch with a double to center scoring Ucko, but Lischer held at third. Up stepped Adam Chung with two outs and the score 16-16 in the final inning. SOM had brought in their ace Malcolm Hall earlier in the game to try and stop the onslaught, but Chung ripped a fastball back up the middle to score Lischer for the walk-off RBI. The sold-out home town crowd went crazy and the spunky team of 8-year-olds celebrated their win.