Chaminade Baseball Sweeps St. Mary’s Doubleheader

There isn’t a baseball player alive who doesn’t like to take it deep. Chicks dig the long ball after all, we’re told.

But there are other kinds of depth besides hitting one out of the park. Depth gives you options. Depth makes things happen.

14-1 is what can happen when you have a bench as long as one of the basepaths, when you return 16 players, 15 of them seniors, seven of which have committed to Division I schools.

4-0 is what can happen when you have a starter who can throw a complete game shutout, a simple taste of what a pitching staff 12 arms deep can accomplish for you.

“We have a deep lineup,” varsity baseball assistant coach Shaun Manning said, cracking a smile. “It’s tough to go through a deep lineup.”

Contrasted against St. Mary’s who have only returned seniors Joe Tracy, catcher Alex Falconi and shortstop Vin Maietta and you get the equivalent of plywood going up against a fully-equipped lumber mill.

These are the things the Flyers are capable of, drubbing St. Mary’s in a doubleheader sweep Monday afternoon on one of Hofstra University’s backfields.

The same lineup and pitching staff that may just have been a pair of buzzsaws that the Gaels ran right into: the lefty-righty combination of Kevin Weissheier and Eric Truss that limited them to one run over 14 innings, the former striking out eight and his arm actually improving as the game went on, the latter going the distance and scattering five hits across the afternoon.

“He’s the bedrock of our rotation,” Manning said of Weissheier, whose teammates chased St. Mary’s starter Pacheco after two-and-a-third and put on a hitting clinic as they batted around in both the third and fifth innings.

Flyers secondbaseman Thomas Roulis went 3-3 with a pair of doubles and three RBIs in the first game before plating an additional two on a single to right in the fifth in the afternoon game. Chaminade catcher Andrew Pohalski went 3-5 in the opening game with 5 RBI.

It was the second complete game of the season for Truss, who’s “worked hard” since his junior year to improve his game Manning said.

The righty made an RBI double down the right field line from Flyer firstbaseman Ken Ritchie that scored shortstop Terrence Connelly hold up for five innings before Chaminade broke it open in the bottom of the fifth, sending seven batters to the plate and scoring three more times.

With a 6-3 record, Chaminade is still looking up from one back in the loss column at the defending champs Holy Trinity in the conference.

Perched as they are, the Flyers seem assured to make the playoffs once more.

The only question is, how deep they will go.