Cardinal hopes alive for Vikings

By Brian Hunsicker

Published: May 13, 2008

With a chance of sharing the Cardinal District baseball regular-season title still in play, Woodbridge’s baseball team could not afford to have their annual trip to Potomac turn out as it had in the recent past.

A close loss, as the Vikings had experienced in previous trips to Dumfries, would have certainly killed most all hope at that title.

Close it was, though Woodbridge held off a seventh-inning rally on the way to a 3-2 win over the Panthers on Tuesday.

Today, the Vikings turn into Potomac fans. If the Panthers can knock off Forest Park, which has one loss in the district, the Bruins will fall into a tie with Woodbridge heading into the 11th hour of the season.

Potomac’s rally was nearly as late in Tuesday’s game. With a 3-1 lead, Woodbridge pitcher Josh Robinson got a flyball out to deep center to start the seventh. But the next batter, Zach O’Connor, hit the ball in precisely the same direction — but a lot further — on an 0-2 count.

O’Connor’s solo home run sailed over the fence in one of the deepest parts of Potomac’s field, cut-ting the Vikings’ lead to one.

“If it was tied or something, I would have had to bear down more,” Robinson said. “But I knew I had one run.”

But that lead grew more tenuous: He then surrendered a line-drive single to Josh Turner, and Vikings coach Jason Ritenour headed to the mound for a chat. But Robinson remained on the mound, giving up a single to pinch-hitter Edgar Quinones and a deep flyout to Kyle Vieira, which moved courtesy runner Tyler Vieira to third base with the tying run.

But Robinson got out of any further damage when Ryan Easterly flied out to left, ending the game.

“The thought entered my mind to go to Jake [Myer], who’s closed games for us this year,” Ritenour said. “But Josh earned the right to try to close it out. I thought he pitched a great game.”

Each of the runs that Woodbridge (13-5, 6-2 Cardinal District) scored could be traced to a Poto-mac mistake of some kind. The Vikings’ first run came in on a passed ball that hit off the home-plate umpire; the second was the direct result of a throwing error; the decisive run came as the result of two two-out walks and a single in the top of the seventh.

Errors were a continual problem for the Panthers (13-6, 5-4), beyond those that allowed runs to score.

“It’s something I don’t have the answers too and it’s very frustrating,” Potomac coach Mike Cov-ington said. “With a senior-laden team, I thought we would be much better this year than we are. But for whatever reason, we just haven’t played [well].

“We’ve just played bad baseball, day in and day out.”