BALTIMORE – The No. 2 seed Haverford College baseball team held on for an 18-11 victory over a feisty No. 3 seed Swarthmore College Saturday at Homewood Field to advance to its third Centennial Conference championship game in the last five years.
Haverford (24-15) scored seven runs and batted around in the fifth, but the Garnet tallied nine runs from the fifth through eighth innings to tie the score. The Fords then plated eight runs and batted around again in the ninth to put the game away.
Haverford established a three-run lead in the first thanks to bases loaded walks by Mike Galetta and Bobby Bailey and a sacrifice fly from Chase Kennedy. The Fords chased Swarthmore (20-18) starter Andy Allen after Galetta's walk.
The Garnet scored one in the bottom of the first then the game went scoreless for the next three innings as Fords starter Jonny Williams and Swarthmore reliever Zach Weiner exchanged zeroes.
The Fords broke the game wide open in the fifth with seven runs. Haverford took advantage of five free passes and one error in the frame. Jeremy Zoll brought in the first run with a single to right-center while the three next runs came in on bases loaded walks.
Swarthmore steadily worked its way back into the game thanks to multi-run innings in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. Tom Nakamura cut the deficit in half, 10-5, with a two-run homer to left center in the sixth.
Williams gave up two singles to start the seventh and gave way to Adam Lewis. Lewis retired the first two batters he faced, but a single by Jimmy Gill plated both runners.
After getting the first batter in the eighth, Lewis ran into trouble as the next two batters reached base and moved into scoring position. Mike Bozzi (1-0) relieved Lewis and Mike Waterhouse crushed Bozzi's first pitch into left for a game-tying three-run homer.
In the top of the ninth Haverford quickly had runners on the corners as the first two batters reached base. Jake Chaplin led off with a double down the left field line. Charlie Carluccio beat out a sacrifice bunt as Chaplin advanced to third. Jeff Butera popped out to third for the first out. Galetta followed with a pop up into shallow center field that fell in and scored Chaplin for the go-ahead run.
After a single by Bailey, Alex Hudak ripped his first career grand slam to right field to give the Fords some breathing room. Chaplin singled in Matt Liscovitz and Zoll in his second at bat of the inning and a batter later Louis DeRosa scored on a wild pitch for the eighth run of the inning.
Carluccio loaded the bases in the ninth, but escaped the jam allowing just one run.
Haverford will face top-seed Johns Hopkins University Sunday in a rematch of the 2008 championship. The Fords must beat Hopkins twice Sunday to win the title. The first game starts at noon.