Wilton-Lyndeborough and Mount Royal may be at the bottom of the Division IV baseball standings, but when two teams are that evenly matched, you can throw the records out the window and hope for a good game. That’s exactly what transpired in Wilton Monday afternoon as the Warriors picked up their first win of the season following a late rally.
“It was good stuff,” WLC head coach Paul Levesque said after the 7-4 win. “I think the kids played hard today. They played real hard.”
The Warriors started Daxton Richard on the mound, but he didn’t have his best stuff, and Levesque gave him the hook trailing 3-1 in the third after two walks, a hit batsman and an outfield error that scored two runs. Luckily for WLC, they had ace JJ Benson in reserve, and he was dealing. Benson threw five innings of no-hit ball with two walks, 12 strikeouts and no earned runs, and the Warriors had a chance.
“He was amazing,” Levesque said. “JJ Benson is by far our number one pitcher. We needed a win. We needed to put one in the bank. And that was why we brought him out.”
Down 4-1 in the fourth, WLC started to rally, scoring on a couple of walks and an RBI single from Paul Lemire. After scoring once, it looked like the Warriors had something going and when Cam Butt slid in safe at home — headfirst — to make it 4-3, the crowd erupted. But, the scoreboard was quickly amended as the umpires conferred and ruled that headfirst slides into home were against the rules, calling an out to end the inning and sending the bewildered fans scrambling to the National Federation of State High School Associations website to pore over the rulebook.
“All [the umpire] said to me was ‘if that ruling was wrong, then I’m sorry,'” Levesque said.
After the game, the officials consulted their rulebooks and determined that there is no restriction on headfirst slides into home in the NFHS standards and apologized to both teams.
Fortunately for the winless Warriors, they hung in the game instead of hanging their heads, and a huge five-run rally in the bottom of the sixth put them up for good.
Richard, who started the game poorly on the mound, finished it in style at the plate, doubling to lead off the inning, scoring to make it 4-3 and then knocking in another run for insurance in the same inning. Catcher Jason Caragher, an undersung hero of the Warriors, knocked in a clutch run in that inning as well, and that was plenty for WLC.
Now, the Warriors (1-9) must try to ride this momentum through the rest of the season.
“This is a big turning point,” coach Levesque said. “If you look at our schedule…we’ve already played all the top teams, so hopefully now we’ll get [wins] in these later games as the season goes on.”
WLC had Hinsdale (1-8) Wednesday and then Nute (4-6) Friday, both on the road.