Columbus Beats St. Brendan in the Teams’ First Baseball Battle Ever

Although only a fence has separated these two schools for so many years, Columbus and St. Brendan have never played each other in baseball. On Tuesday night, the bleachers at Columbus were full to capacity to watch the Explorers and the Sabres face off in a Selective Recruiting Invitational tournament game that also pitted the #1 vs #4 teams in Miami’s Power Rankings. Although it was played at Columbus, St. Brendan was the home team because of tournament rules.

After a sloppy game that was filled with walks and errors from both teams, it was the Explorers who squeezed out a 9-8 victory to make their record 2-0 for the tournament and 10-1 overall.

Some of the sloppiness may have been due to the fact that the starting Columbus second baseman broke his hand in the team’s previous game against Archbishop McCarthy.

“We are still playing around with the infield and trying to find the right combination due to the injury,” Columbus head coach Joe Weber said.

Second baseman for the Sabres, Jose Carrera, on the other hand, had a superb day. He led the game off for the Sabres with a triple after the right fielder gave a diving effort but came up just short. Sly Edwards then singled to left field and drove in Carrera.

Carrera was great for St. Brendan all night. He ended up going 3-for-4 with two doubles, a triple, two RBI and two runs scored.

“Jose (Carrera) is our spark plug,” St. Brendan assistant coach Joe Cubas said. “He is a high energy kid that spills his guts out for this team, and you saw it today as he always steps up in the big games.”

The fielding problems began in the second inning for the Explorers. An early error allowed the Sabres to get on base. Then Henry Knez singled and a sacrifice bunt from Danny Rivero moved them into scoring position. Then it was Carrera again to pump some energy into his team. He hit a ball to second and his speed forced a poor throw to first and the error allowed both runners to score. At the end of two the Sabres had built up a 4-1 lead.

But Columbus had its own big inning in the top half of the third. St. Brendan pitching was rough in the inning as three batters were walked and another batter hit by a pitch. The walks, combined with an error and a timely single from Columbus’ Cris Perez that drove in two runs, allowed for the Explorers to take a 5-4 lead over the Sabres.

St. Brendan scraped its way back into the game again in the fourth inning. Danny Rivero hit a double to the left-field corner and then again Carrera came up big. He hit an RBI double off the wall in left field to tie the score.

However, the fifth inning wound up being another big one for the Explorers. A single from Danny Lynch and a couple more walks loaded the bases for Brent Diaz. After a bizarre play in which many thought ball four was called, Lynch actually wound up stealing home. Diaz then hit a double to drive in another run.

When it seemed as Columbus was about to pull away, up came Carrera again for St. Brendan with another RBI double to drive in Jonathon Lavilla to make the game 8-6.

Cris Perez gave the Explorers some breathing room in the seventh when he doubled and later scored on a wild pitch. The run proved to be huge when St. Brendan rallied to score a couple in the bottom half of the inning.

“Offensively, we were patient and played very well,” Weber said. “We didn’t press when we were down and took walks and passed it on to the next guy, but they (St. Brendan) are a very good team that kept coming at us the whole night.”

After two quick outs, the errors appeared again for Columbus, kept the inning alive and allowed Eric Alvarez and Henry Knez to get two more hits for the Sabres and score a couple more runs before Columbus’ reliever Ryan Guerra was able to strike out Lavilla to end the game.

“We are proud of the team in the way they battle,” Cubas said. “But we also told them about their mistakes like giving up eight walks to a quality team like Columbus. We can’t expect to win games that way.”

The Sabres fall to 10-2. They face International High School from Puerto Rico on Thursday night. Columbus will host Dwyer from Palm Beach tonight.

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