Uniontown legion moves on
CHARLEROI – A complete team sticks together at all times, and does all the little things necessary to winning games. Uniontown’s Fayette American Legion baseball team proved once more Thursday they are a complete team with one goal in mind – winning a second consecutive playoff championship.
And led by Bob Madison, Uniontown notched a 9-8 victory over Charleroi to take one step closer its objective.
Madison went 4-for-4 at the plate with a walk, and pitched the final three and two-thirds innings to pick up the save and complete the sweep of Charleroi to send Uniontown into the championship series against Point Marion or Connellsville.
“On paper, I don’t know if we should have won either of these two games,” Uniontown coach Ron Popovich said. “But these guys have more heart than anyone and they never quit. So far, we haven’t lost a playoff game in two years and that says a lot.”
Uniontown used a combination of timely hitting, solid defense and sensational pitching to hold off a tough Charleroi team.
At first, Uniontown’s offense put Charleroi in a hole after the fourth inning by scoring five runs to take a 5-1 lead. The biggest hit of the inning came when Nick Midlik tripled with the bases loaded.
“That triple really got us going and got the kids pumped up it seemed,” Popovich said. “That was big and Midlik has been doing that all year.”
Charleroi, however, erased the big lead and created a lead of its own in the very next inning with five runs off Nate Fike.
Justin Deustch doubled with a runner on first and both runners moved up on an a dropped fly ball in center field. Kris Marchewka helped his own cause with a RBI single and Rick Bartman cleared the bases behind him with a home run over the right-center field fence.
Charleroi put more runners on base, keeping the inning still alive, until Uniontown catcher Mike George came through with perhaps the game’s biggest play.
Niko Smolec singled to center field that gave Pete Labrasca the opportunity to score from second base, but George blocked the plate twice as the ball came in and bounced away from him before he could pick it up and take Labrasca for the final out.
“That would have put them further ahead and kept their rally going,” Popovich said. “It was absolutely huge for Mike to come up as big as he did there. The umpire told me after the game that that was one of the best’s plays he’s ever seen by a catcher.”
From there, the Uniontown offense regained the lead in the sixth inning, with four runs, highlighted by Jimmy Blosser’s two-run single.
Charleroi threatened in its half of the sixth, but could only put two runs across before Madison entered the game and ended the inning with a 6-4-3 double play while the bases were loaded.
Madison held Charleroi to just one hit over the final three innings and struck out Smolec to end the game.
“That game was intense,” Popovich said. “The key was, we had Bob Madison. He came in and won the game for us.”
Charleroi fought until its last out as Neil Pascarella, the game-tying run, stood at third base when Smolec struck out to end the game, but first-year coach Luke Mollis was proud of his team’s fight and will be back next year.
“They fought hard and that’s what I asked of them,” Mollis said. “But we are young team and we don’t lose a guy from our team next year, so we’ll look to be back.”
Uniontown now will await the winner of the semi-final series between Point Marion and Connellsville. Currently Connellsville leads the series 1-0, with game two scheduled for today at 5:30 p.m. in Point Marion.