On the fourth pitch of the 2024 Cape Cod Baseball League season, the Chatham Anglers’ Austin Overn hit a hard ground ball down the first base line, ricocheting off the first base bag into right field. Three batters — and two outs — later, another Chatham ground ball bounced on the lip of the infield grass and flew over Wareham Gatemen second baseman Ty Dooley’s head (Coastal Carolina) into the outfield, allowing Overn time to come around to score the first run of the game.
Chatham went on to win the game 11-1.
“It kind of set the tone a little bit there, when we would have gotten out of the jam,” manager Ryan Smyth said.
The Gatemen struggled to find a groove Saturday night, faced with a combination of unlucky fielding mishaps and first-game jitters. They were only able to bring one run across the plate on a total of six hits, and committed two fielding errors as a team.
Four different pitchers took the mound over the course of the seven-inning game, allowing a total of 12 hits, 11 runs, six walks and five strikeouts.
“I say this time and time again, this league puts a lot of pressure on kids,” Smyth said.
The top of the third inning saw four Chatham runners cross home plate but the sixth inning was the true turning point of the game as the Anglers plated six runs — two of which came from bases-loaded walks — and the Gatemen were unable to answer in the bottom of the inning.
“We’ve gotta get in positive counts on the mound,” Smyth said. “We got in a lot of three-two counts which, you know, when you’re sitting on a fastball and you know you’re getting it, it becomes a little easier to hit.”
It would have been easy for the Gatemen to become discouraged early in Saturday’s game — whether it was because of their bad luck in the top of the first, their own struggles to get on base or the difficulties on the mound — but they didn’t. The team remained calm and collected, doing their best to stay patient at the plate and stick to the basics of the game.
They were rewarded for their efforts in the bottom of the seventh inning when, after Eli Putnam (Davidson) and Colby Turner (Michigan) both worked walks, Michael Lippe (Louisville) singled to bring Putnam home for the Gatemen’s first run of the 2024 season. However, the league's new 10-run rule deemed the game over after the seventh inning.
“We fought at the end,” Smyth said. “Teams easily could have folded there, so that’s good to see. If you want to take the positives out of it, we did fight until the end, and they were into it.”
Lippe and Jace Rinehart (USC Upstate) both went 2-for-3 on the night, and four Gatemen reached base via walks. Tony Pluta (Arizona) pitched two scoreless innings in relief, recording one strikeout and walking one batter.
Despite the final score, to Smyth, the bottom line is this: the pieces are there.
“Once these guys get comfortable and kind of get into a groove, hitting is contagious,” he said. “Pitching is the same thing. We’ve just got to get on track first.”
And the fact that the Gatemen have to turn around and play another game tomorrow? Smyth wouldn’t want it any other way.
“I want to play as many games as we possibly can,” he said. “You’re going to win some, you’re going to lose some. And you hope not to lose them like that, but that’s baseball. It’s good to get right back at it, you know, it allows you to forget about something like this real quick.”
Top Photo Credit: Michael Lippe prepares to swing at a pitch during Wareham's 11-1 loss to the Chatham Anglers, June 15 2024 at Spillane Field in Wareham. Photo by Kyler Armstrong.
