Flashback to Tuesday, July 21. A day on which all of Cape Cod was held under siege by a downpour of rain.

In Harwich, Massachusetts, and specifically for the Commodores and the Mariners, that didn’t spell the absence of baseball, by any means. In fact, they were just nine outs away from completing a full nine-inning game.

Mother Nature had other plans for the two squads, however.

As a two-run game reached its climax, the weather interjected. Rain started to come down in abundance as Casen Murphy (Louisville) trotted out from the bullpen to begin his quest for his second save of the season.

“I come in after [Brayden] Bergman in the eighth and the rain starts to pick up,” he recalled. “I gave up a base hit, get an out, and then they made us come off the field.”

At that point, Casen had started to slip on the bump, clay had started to turn into mud and the baseball was growing more difficult to see through the copious amount of raindrops that began to create a pool in the third-base bleachers at Whitehouse Field.

The umpires had no choice but to send the game into a rain delay, and in my brief conversation with them during the break, the sentiment from home plate ump Brendan Murphy was as such: “I don’t see us going back out there to play.”

Steve Englert, however, wouldn’t allow a decision to be made without his input.

The Mariners’ manager had all the right pieces in place to steal a win from under the Commodores’ noses. One out, a runner on first, and the tying run at the dish in leadoff man Colin Larson (Boston College). He argued to finish the inning — that Harwich should have the right to bat as the home team. That they should have the final say.

He had a valid point, and the umpires agreed. The two squads would be summoned to complete the inning they’d started to decide the winner.

Head coach Jack Dahm was not pleased. But he was handcuffed. There was nothing he could do except send his guys back out to play.

“He was a little pissed off that we were still playing that game just because there was no reason to play it, especially [because of] the conditions that someone could have got hurt,” said shortstop Drew Terpins, who plays for Dahm at Mount Mercy. “But it was a 2-0 ball game. We had to go out there and get two more, so he was keeping us locked in.”

Despite the message, the shock of the decision from the umpires seemed to paralyze the Commodore defense at the resumption of play. A slow roller from Colin Larson (Boston College) evaded the glove of Terpins after a misstep on the water-drenched infield grass, and in the blink of an eye, the Mariners had runners on the corners with the heartbeat of their lineup coming to the dish.

This was the turning point for the ‘Dores. The point where they’ve realized that harping on the circumstances of the situation would only bring them an even worse outcome. It was when they reached a place of acceptance of the predicament they were in. The collective thought became “how do we get out of this spot?”

“It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it happened and I tend to not really reflect on mistakes because I can't change them,” Terpins said. For him, the rain brought him invaluable takeaways, saying “now I know [to] play that ball differently next time we get out of a rain delay.”

The elements had not only given the Mariners runners on the corners, but prime positioning to steal a victory from beneath the Commodores.

And as a fan, that realization was an uncomfortable one. One that made you sick to your stomach and angry beyond belief.

Falmouth underwent those exact emotions in the moment and it brought out an infectious edge in Murphy that we hadn’t seen before, attacking the next pair of batters with everything he had left in the tank.

A popout and a strikeout later, the ‘Dores had overcome a monstrous roadblock.

Their payoff? A feeling of euphoria.

“The dugout had a lot of juice,” said Murphy. “For some reason, when the rain starts to come, people's energy starts to get higher…everybody was in the game there at the end, so it was pretty unique.”

And according to his catcher Mike Gialluisi (Villanova), that energy was what elevated Murphy and the ‘Dores to victory.

“Guys were fired up just to go out and earn a win – really earn it rather than just kind of having them hand it to us. All kudos to [Murphy] for executing there and winning the game.”

But on a broader scale, something clicked in that bottom of the eighth.

The infectious edge, the will to win, the electricity shared amongst those in the Commodore dugout — all of it snowballed into the realization that a scrappy, aggressive, ambitious style of baseball is what’s best for ‘Dores baseball. It’s what they’ve been playing with this past week, as they ride a four-game win streak into Wareham this evening. During that stretch, they’ve clobbered teams for 29 runs on 44 hits, and lead the CCBL in batting average, OPS, RBI and extra-base hits over the last week of play.

As all eyes dart towards a tight West Division in the final days of the regular season, a Falmouth squad who’s regained control of its own identity seems to once again be a viable contender to win it all.

Its climb back to the top started in that eighth inning, in the middle of a thunderstorm in Harwich.