LYNN — If there’s one thing to take away from Wednesday’s baseball game between Lynn Classical and Somerville, it’s that the Rams will never give up.
Down twice in an epic nine-inning showdown, the Rams fought through difficult moments to escape victorious 5-4.
Down 4-2 in the bottom of the eighth, heads could have been dropped after Classical gave up a two-run shot to Somerville. That said, the Rams stuck with their gameplan and continued to battle.
The bases were loaded with two outs as Almani Gerardo came to the plate. Gerardo waited for his pitch and hit a hard groundball to the infield. Gerardo showed his speed as he reached first safely, bringing in one run at the plate (4-3).
Then, Classical pinch runner Darnell Leon noticed Somerville wasn’t paying attention and sprinted home before reaching safely to tie things 4-4.
“Darnell was put in as a pinch runner. He’s one of our quicker guys. He got on base and kept saying to us on the bench, ‘I’m scoring’. His baserunning IQ is pretty high, so when the opportunity came, he went and scored,” Zukowski said.
The following inning, with two runners on, Classical’s Ethan Chevalier was the hero. Chevalier hit a soft groundball, but because of his intensity running to first, the Somerville infielder made an error on the throw, allowing Classical to score and win the game 5-4.
“Chevy (Chevalier) came up and I’ve been hammering this all season,” Zukowski said. “Put the ball in play on the ground.”
Zukowski believes his team needed a game like this to prepare for its future schedule.
“We’re going to be facing much tougher teams and playing non-league games,” Zukowski said. “We’re going to need this type of experience to get through that.”
When asked what he liked about the comeback, Zukowski talked about his team’s “short memory.”
“You go down early – you can’t put your head down, you can’t allow that to affect you. You need to have a short memory in this game and they did,” Zukowski said.
Somerville hit a solo home run in the first inning and led many times in this one, but none of that mattered to the Rams.
“Last week, we scored like 25 runs and our pitchers let up zero in three games. Those are the easy games to win. When life is easy, it’s fun [and] we’re winning, but today was good in terms of the little things,” Zukowski said. “Executing. Sticking with it. Just being behind each other the entire time. These are the games we’re going to have to learn how to win.”
