Blaney Farms routs Copperheads
Van Sickle leads way in win over Carmichaels
CARMICHAELS-During the school year, Scott Van Sickle teaches Carmichaels students like soon-to-be juniors Joby Lapkowicz and Chuck Gasti in the classroom. This past Monday, he gave them a lesson in power hitting. Van Sickle, the leadoff hitter for Blaney Farms, blasted a pair of opposite field homeruns over the short porch at the Carmichaels Area High School baseball field and added a double to the mix to lead his team past Carmichaels by the score of 11-1 in Fayette County League action.
“Scotty’s the best hitter in the league,” Blaney Farms head coach Lou Pasquale said.
“He’s hitting something like .560. He’s carried us for much of the season.”
The win boosted Blaney Farms’ record to a league-best 19-4-1.
If Pasquale’s estimation is accurate, Van Sickle’s big night on July 16 did nothing but improve his numbers. The second baseman went 3-4 with the three extra base hits, a walk, three runs scored and five runs driven in.
Both of his long balls came off of Carmichaels starter Justin Schraeder, who gave up seven earned runs in just three and a third innings of work.
Van Sickle got to work right away as he led off the game with a double. After number two hitter Jason Greene struck out, shortstop Shayne Busti, a former student of Van Sickle’s, ripped a double up the middle to make the score 1-0.
In the second, after number nine hitter Bill Rouse tripled in Jeremy Thomas to make the score 2-0, Van Sickle did it again, driving a Schraeder pitch over the right field fence to run his team’s run tally to 4-0.
After failing to put up any runs in the third, it was Van Sickle again delivering a serious blow to the Copperheads, this time belting a three-run blast off of Schraeder, which drove in designated hitter Jim Cales and Rouse and put his team ahead 7-0.
Van Sickle, who used to play under Carmichaels head coach Dickie Krause, has always enjoyed competing at Carmichaels’ field, whether as a coach or a player.
“I used to play here for a couple years for Krause and I coached the high school team for the past three years, but not this year,” Van Sickle said. “I like the field.”
Along with the stellar hitting of Van Sickle and others, Rouse ended the game 2-3 with a triple, single, RBI and three runs scored. Blaney Farms got some outstanding pitching from ace starter Marty Fagler.
“Marty threw well today,” Pasquale said. “That’s what you need, obviously. He’s one of the toughest lefties in this league, that’s for sure.”
Fagler worked six innings while giving up just three hits, one earned run, a homer by Gene Franks in the fourth, two walks and recording three strikeouts. The former West Virginia University hurler retired the first eight hitters he faced.
That lack of hitting, combined with spotty fielding and almost silent bats, made a combination that doomed Krause’s team from competing against the top team in the league.
“We just weren’t ready to play,” Krause said. “For whatever reason we just came out flat and you would think playing Blaney Farms would bring out a really good effort from us. We were just not mentally ready to play tonight.”
In fact, Krause called his team’s effort against their rivals from Blaney Farms one of the worst he’s ever seen.
“I’ve had this team for 20-plus years, this would rank as the worst, if not one of the two or three worst efforts we’ve ever had,” Krause said.
“Defensively we were awful, we didn’t hit, pitching was poor and we didn’t do anything right. We’ve reached the bottom of our season.”
Along with youth, Carmichaels features several players who have recently graduated high school or are still in high school. Krause points to a problem that is faced by many Fayette League teams for the Copperheads’ 11-8-2 record, a lack of players.
“There’s no mystery here,” Krause said. “We’ve won the championship four out of the last five years. We’ve lost a lot from those teams and this year, we can not set a lineup. I bet if I go back and look at the score book, we’ve had 21 different lineups in 21 different games.”
However, the veteran head coach of the defending league champions was able to find some sort of positive in his team’s loss.
“We’re not dead by any stretch of the imagination,” Krause said. “They say you’ve got to reach rock bottom before you can start heading back up there again. It was a rough night tonight in a lot of ways.”