ST. MARYS — Baseball is a humbling game by nature.
Monday’s PIAA playoffs were a prime example, as Johnsonburg’s season was halted in the Class 2A opening round. The Rams entered the state playoffs with high hopes, but one inning — one swing, to be specific — changed the trajectory of their season.
A five-run 3rd inning by Burgettstown proved too much for Jburg to overcome in a back-and-forth battle at Berwind Park. And, despite Jburg’s attempts at a comeback, Brodie Kuzior’s grand slam provided a blow from which the Rams couldn’t recover.
Burgettstown held on to win, 6-5, and advance to the PIAA quarterfinals. As a stunned Jburg contingent left the field, the final score provided a reminder of the unpredictability of America’s pastime.
“That’s baseball — you need to be able to grind through those things and overcome them,” Jburg coach Mike Porter said. “When a guy hits a grand slam, that’s a big momentum shift, and we were kind of grinding back the whole time. Things weren’t going our way no matter where we looked. It was just one of those days at the ballpark.”
Jburg entered the game on a nine-game win streak, including a 9-5 victory seven days prior that sealed its second consecutive District 9 championship. Against Distict 7 fourth-place finisher Burgettstown, however, the Ram lineup struggled to string together hits against a pair of lefty pitchers.
“You always wonder if you’ll have the same momentum after those seven days off as you did before,” Porter said. “Our lineup was hitting really hot and kind of cooled off (Monday). We had some hits, but we couldn’t string three or four together and get one inning going to blow it open.”
Jburg came out firing, as Dom Allegretto roped the first pitch of the Rams 1st inning to the right field wall for a triple. Aiden Zimmerman then singled him home for the game’s first run, and Jburg would go on to add two more runs in the 2nd on a Colin Porter single.
Burgettstown countered by loading the bases with no one out in the 3rd, however, and just after it appeared as though Colin Porter had escaped the jam unscathed, a game-changing sequence of events unfolded.
The right-hander forced a pair of pop-ups for two quick outs, and after getting ahead in the count against cleanup hitter Andrew Bredel, three consecutive borderline pitches were called balls, forcing in a run via walk. That brought up Kuzior, who sent a fly ball just over the right-field wall and the out-stretched glove of Caden Smiley to shockingly give the Blue Devils a 5-3 lead.
“One swing. That’s basically what it boils down to,” Mike Porter said. “I thought we made some pitches there that could have gotten us out of that inning and didn’t, and the next thing you know, there’s a swing and the whole ball game changes.”
From there, Jburg clawed back, but couldn’t erase the deficit. Allegretto drove in Jefferson Freeburg with a single in the 4th, and after Camron Marciniak started the Rams 5th with a long triple, Kaden Dennis drove him home on a groundout.
Burgettstown would keep its lead intact, however, as Kuzior singled home a run in the 5th to prevent Jburg from tying the game. Bredel, meanwhile, did his best to keep the Rams off the base paths, scattering seven hits while striking out seven.
Zimmerman relieved Colin Porter in the 6th and kept the Blue Devils off the scoreboard, but Kuzior matched him in relief for Burgettstown. He retired the meat of Jburg’s lineup in order in the 7th, eliminating any hope of late-game heroics.
“It’s tough when you’re in a one-run ballgame,” Mike Porter said. “We’ve come out on top of them more times than not, but sometimes, you’re going to lose. Single-elimination baseball is tough.”
Burgettstown will advance to Thursday’s state quarterfinals, while Monday marked the end of the road for a Jburg team that dropped an extra-inning heartbreaker in the state quarterfinals last season. After back-to-back district titles and a 16-4 campaign in 2022, however, Mike Porter’s team has much to be proud of.
“Sitting here right now, it’s a lot of heartache, but a lot of teams would be thrilled to win back-to-back D9 titles,” Mike Porter said. “We felt we had a team that probably could have made a deeper run in the playoffs, but that’s the way baseball goes sometimes.”
AT ST. MARYS
R H E
Btown:
Jburg: Colin Porter (2 SO, 2 BB), Aiden Zimmerman (6) (0 SO, 1 BB) and Ethan Wells
