High School Baseball:
Last Inning Heroics Gives Cherry Hill East The Win

Saturday, May 1, 1999

By Art Redd
SJSports Staff Writer

Whenever a school has a successful baseball program, teams are either intimidated by their accomplishments or ready to prove that they can compete. Millville traveled to Cherry Hill East High School ready to play baseball and put the mornings SATs behind them. Millville was very impressive holding East in check throughout most of the game, but good teams find ways to win. Cherry Hill East used every at bat and scored in the last inning to gain a come from behind victory to defeat Millville 6-5 in a non-league game.

The Cougars were fresh off of a convincing victory over Eastern and may have been looking past SaturdayÕs game toward the conference game against the Shawnee Renegades on Monday. The Thunderbolts starting pitcher Tim Wallace was very impressive. Through six innings, the Cougars only managed 2 hits off of Wallace and four walked batters. Those walks were the results of one of the two runs the Cougars scored. In the third inning, Chuck Eller lined a triple to center that scored 2 runs and Bill Powers' sacrifice fly plated Eller for the third run of the inning to give Millville a 4-1 lead.

Going into the final inning, Sherrad Barber had been called in for relief for Millville but ran into trouble after retiring the first batter on a ground out to second. With a 5-2 lead, coach Roy Hallenbeck allowed Barber to continue on in the inning. John Braut drew a four-pitch walk and Derek Liu bounced a ball to the pitcher for a force out at second, Barber gave up an RBI single to cut the lead to 5-3. A walk to Justin Kaplan forced in another run to close the gap to one and things got a bit interesting. Hallenbeck lifted Barber when the bases were loaded with two outs and brought in the starting catcher Bill Powers to close things out. Powers worked the pitch count to full and Andrew Townsend became the hero of the game when his single scored the tying and winning run. It was a thrilling win for Cherry Hill East and increased their record to 10-2.

Photos by Dan Cleary