Jul 14, 2005 By Alan Smodic For The 3 min read

CONNELLSVILLE – With one swing of the bat, a baseball game’s momentum can instantly flow from one team to another. And all season long, when given the opportunity to impact a game, Connellsville’s Chris Pepe has done just that to most teams in the Fayette American Legion baseball league.

Wednesday’s opening game of Connellsville’s second round playoff matchup with Point Marion was no exception.

Pepe busted open a scoreless game in the third inning by belting a three-run home run over the left-center field fence off Point Marion starter Josh Null, leading Connellsville to a 7-1 victory.

“Chris has been swinging a hot bat for me all year,” Connellsville coach Sherwood Hughes said. “He has a really quick bat and he got all of that ball. That was a big break for us in the game to put tension on them.”

Luckily for Connellsville though, Point Marion coach Dennis Santella didn’t follow through with what ran through his mind when the count reached one ball and no strikes on Pepe.

“I should have walked him,” Santella admitted. “I said to my assistant coach that we should walk him, but the next pitch was a nice low curve and you saw what happened to it.”

The three runs were more than enough for Travis Henry, who earned the win on the mound for Connellsville.

Henry worked six innings, allowing just the one run on two hits, while striking out three and walking five. More importantly, Henry showed his poise and mound presence in the early innings, working out of three jams.

Runners reached second and third in the first inning, but Henry recorded two groundouts and a fly out to end the inning. Two runners again reached base for Point Marion in the second and third innings, but the Connellsville defense held strong.

“We got out of a couple tight jams that we put ourselves into,” Hughes said. “We made the right plays. I told my guys to make the basic plays, we didn’t need anything special and to be smart.”

After Point Marion gained one run back in the sixth inning off a RBI single by Aaron Jerome, Connellsville responded with two runs of its own on two sacrifice flies.

Bob Fulton walked to lead off the winning and moved to third when Wes Hughes reached on an error. Andy Schliehauf moved both runners up 90 feet with a sacrifice fly to right field, while Pepe knocked in Hughes with his own sacrifice to left.

A final scoring threat was put together by Point Marion in the seventh inning when they loaded the bases with no outs.

Jarrod Lint, however, grounded to the shortstop who threw home for the force out and Connellsville reliever, Clay Hurley, ended the inning by getting a ground ball from Scott Plaski to start a 6-4-3 double play.

“Again, another situation we had to work our way out of,” Hughes said. “It took the whole game to shake our rust off it seemed, but I’m more than happy to walk out of here with a 7-1 win over those guys. They are a good team.”

The two teams will meet today at 5:30 p.m. in Point Marion for game two of the series. Point Marion needs a win to stay alive and force a game three and will look to do so with Plaski starting on the hill.

“We left too many on base and you can’t do that against them,” Santella said. “But we played a pretty good ball game otherwise, and I think we’re going to give them a game tomorrow.”