Joey Lippo
Contributed by Joe Lippo.
There were four boys from Coupeville who were invited to play on the Oak Harbor Babe Ruth Wildcats travel baseball team.
CMS 8th graders Hunter Smith and Joey Lippo and 7th graders Gabe and Ty Eck made the cut this year.
To recap the start of the season, the Oak Harbor boys were having issues finding the sweet spot, and dropped their first six games.
Admittedly, these games were against teams from the older section of the league, including a Ferndale team that made the Everett Silvertips look small.
However, things started coming together this week.
A trip to Mount Vernon resulted in a loss, but the Cats answered back with a convincing win in the second game of the home and away series.
Saturday they took the long ferry ride to Friday Harbor for a double header.
The first game featured Friday Harbor scoring all its runs in the first and second innings, and then getting totally outplayed in the last five.
Smith and Lippo accounted for two RBI in the comeback attempt, and Gabe Eck made several key catches at center field. Thomas Anderson flashed the leather at third base, while Kamren Mebane soaked up everything that came his way at first.
It was not to be however, and the game ended as several players could be heard wishing for “one more inning” to complete the comeback.
The second game saw the Oak Harbor bats staying alive to take an early lead off hits from James Besaw, Drew Eaton and Chris Trisler.
Through the middle innings, Friday Harbor chipped away at the Wildcat lead, and the score at the top of the 5th was 6-4 in favor of Oak Harbor, but with Friday Harbor coming on strong.
Sensing that the momentum had shifted away from his team, Coach Shawn Trisler put Josh Margraff on the mound, shifted Ty Eck to second and put Lippo in at shortstop.
Then Margraff, Lippo and Smith, who was catching, proceeded to shut down Friday Harbor over the next three innings.
Margraff threw everything under the sun, including a breaking ball that went straight for the batters head, and then sank neatly across the plate.
Lippo made a dazzling play at shortstop, and Smith picked off a runner at third.
The bats also came back in the sixth for Oak Harbor, as it ran the score up to 8-4.
The bottom of the 7th featured a Friday Harbor home run, but that was all they could muster as Margraff helped his own cause with a pickoff at 2nd and a strikeout.
He capped things by fielding a comeback ball neatly, flipping to Besaw at first for the final out and an 8-5 win.
Both games featured a season low for errors (a problem that Oak Harbor has been struggling with), and more hits, a sure combination for victory.
