Jonathan Thurston struck out nine in four innings Friday, leaving with a 4-2 lead in what turned into a 14-7 win. (John Fisken photo)
A whole lot of runs, a whole lot of screaming.
Playing on a windy, often very chilly Friday afternoon, the Coupeville High School JV baseball squad took advantage of an endless stream of walks and errors, drilling visiting North Mason 14-7 in their first game of the season.
With the Wolves piling up 16 walks and the Bulldogs committing 10,904 errors (give or take one or two), the game went more than three hours, eventually being called after five innings because of encroaching darkness.
Before the game ended, fans were treated to a solid pitching outing from CHS starter Jonathan Thurston, who whiffed nine and gave up just two unearned runs in four innings of work.
They were also treated to either the world’s most entertaining, or annoying (depending on your pain tolerance) rival player.
We may never know the name of North Mason’s catcher, but his voice, which ripped across the diamond on every single pitch for 180+ minutes — it was like he was channeling a young Ozzy Osbourne working as a baseball announcer when he was in the dugout — will never be forgotten.
Well played, young sir, well played.
The game he was so deeply committed to started with a quick run in the top of the first for North Mason, and it was a run which set a tone for the next 20.
A Bulldog hitter struck out, but reached base when the pitch got loose and bounced off the backstop.
A pick-off throw went wild to move him to second, then a steal of third was capped by the ensuing throw landing deep in left field while the North Mason runner skipped home.
Luckily for Coupeville, while that style of creating runs continued all afternoon, after that it was the Wolves pulling off the creative scoring.
CHS collected two of its four hits in the first — singles from Joey Lippo and Kyle Rockwell — and combined that with four Bulldog errors and two walks to retake the lead 3-1.
The Wolves added another run in the second, off of an RBI single from Lippo, and the game actually played out as a bit of a pitcher’s duel for three-and-a-half innings.
Then, with Coupeville up 4-2 headed into the bottom of the fourth, things got kooky, to the tune of 15 runs in the next inning and a half.
A whopping 12 batters strolled to the plate in the bottom of the fourth, with six different Wolves reaching on a walk.
Add in four North Mason errors — coming on four consecutive plays — and a string of stolen bases, and Coupeville threw six runs on the (non-existent) scoreboard in the inning.
Without once hitting the ball out of the infield.
Up 10-2 with the bases still juiced and just one out, CHS was rolling, but a strikeout and a force at home kept the Wolves from entering 10-run territory.
Still, they were in solid control of the game … until they weren’t.
With Thurston done for the afternoon, Coupeville hit a rough patch in the top of the fifth, suddenly committing the same kind of wild-eyed errors the Bulldogs had been in love with all game.
Taking advantage of throws sailing from the pitcher’s mound into deep right field, and a missed tag here and there, North Mason picked up a five-spot of its own, tightening things back to 10-7.
The Wolves escaped though, after relief pitcher Lippo teamed up with infielder Nick Etzell to pick two straight runners off of second base, ending the threat.
CHS padded the lead out in the bottom half of the inning, and took long enough doing it to run through the remaining daylight.
Freshman Ulrik Wells punched a single to load the bases, before the Wolves plated four more, three on walks to Elliott Johnson, Cameron Dahl and Jonathan Carlson.
For the game, 14 of the 15 Wolves to see action reached base, with Jake Pease getting on four times, thanks to three walks and a Bulldog error.
Jacob Zettle walked three times, Shane Losey turned two errors and a walk into three trips around the base-paths and Gavin Knoblich reached base twice, while spending his “down” time sprinting from the dugout like a madman every time a foul ball landed within 200 feet of him.
James Vidoni, Gavin Straub and Seth Weatherford rounded out the Wolf roster, with Vidoni and Weatherford collecting walks.
