St Sebastians School - Arrow Yearbook (Newton, MA)

Page 145 text:

first two batters easily and the game seemed in the bag until an inglorious muff of a fly ball in our outfield permitted McCarthy, who had singled, to race across with the tieing run. just to make the dismal tale complete, after we had wasted a single in the top half of the tenth, Nader, whom Mc- Auliffe had fanned on two previous occasions, tripled to right and was squeezed across to give the home team a 9-8 victory. On the long trip home it seemed as if our cup of woe was brimming over after two one-run defeats in as many days. After these reverses, Fortune smiled on us the following Wednesday when we visited Belmont Hill and came through with a 5-1 triumph in one of the best played games of the season. At game time the umpire assigned had failed to put in an appearance, so Mr. Croke, Faculty Athletic Director of the host school, was prevailed upon to act as arbiter and he proved to be as fine an official as we met all year. While we filled the bases in the first and Ed Quirk tripled to open the second, Nemrow on the Belmont mound had plenty of stuff and was able to bear down in the pinches. After we had wasted a Gibbons single in the third, the home team smashed out their first two singles off Andy in the last half of the same round to score a run and that single marker loomed larger with each passing inning. Finally we broke the long chain of scoreless frames to tie up the contest in the seventh. Lead-off man, Ed Quirk, drew a walk and scampered to second on a passed ball. To push him along, George McGoldrick sacrificed neatly and Frank O'Donoghue, batting for Boyle, squeezed Quirkie in with a beautiful drag bunt that did not permit a play to be made at the plate. Both sides continued to play air-tight ball until Andy opened our ninth with a clean safety to right and then ran the bases wild, unsettling the infield and causing an error that permitted him to score. Shortly thereafter, Quirk walked and adopted the same technique, crossing the plate when the third baseman let the catcher's peg go through to left field. McGoldrick followed with another bingle but it was wasted and -I l4l 1- the game ended with a 3-1 verdict in our favor. Besides breaking the contest wide open, McAuliffe turned in one of his best performances, whifling 16 and giving up only six hits. A return contest with Brookline High at Tech Field found the Wealthy Town aggre- gation as strong as when we met them earlier in the season, although we gave them a bad scare in the opening inning by pushing across three runs. An infield and outfield error followed by a walk made Coach Tom Fitz- gerald derrick his starting pitcher, Robinson, and call in his ace, MacPhee. from left field. With the bases loaded, Quirkie drew a walk to force in our first run and then Hilt Collupy blasted in two more with a single to center and we were in front, 3-0. At that point, MacPhee put the fire out and his rival, Andy, seemed to inherit the lack of control for he walked the first three men to face him in the last half and, by dint of a timely single, the home team proceeded to tie the score. With the teams on equal terms again, Robinson returned to the mound from left field and we were able to solve his slants only in the fourth when we gleaned one run on four bingles, a double play killing off our chances of a big rally. In the meantime, a homer by Hatch with a man on in the third had sent Brookline out in front, and we were never able to catch up again. Three walks followed by a single and a triple gave them a four-run grist in the sixth and by game's end they had amassed a 12-4 advantage. In the box score, the totals gave Brookline 8 hits to our 7, but the difference lay in the T.B. column, our opponents having 14 as against our failure to come up with a single extra-base hit. Once again, Andy's whiffs were notable, 12 victims being added to his ever- lengthening string. The recollection of our breath-taking 5-4 win over Exeter a year before made our trip to New Hampshire all the more enjoyable and we relished the pre-game dinner at Lamie's, just beyond Hampton Beach. As was to be expected, the sight of the athletic lay-

Page 144 text:

Mcf OLDRICK OUT AT FIRST caused his exodus with a 3-0 deficit before the side was retired in the first. At that point, jim Cotter came in to put out the fire tem- porarily, although the home team found him for a single score in the third and three additional tallies in the fourth. Up until the fifth, it seemed as if we had done all our hitting the day before against Hopkins and had no dynamite left, but in that frame the Central hurler went up in the air and forced across a run with four consecutive passes. Finding the bases still loaded, Henry Lane drove Kelly and Ellard in with a clean single to left, and then scored on Gibby's heels when Ed Quirk propelled a screaming triple to the same sector. We pulled closer to Lawrence in the sixth when Hilt Collupy singled with two down and then ran wild on the bases, scoring when Abdulla let the catcher's peg go through him at third. Once again there were two out when we started an attack in the ninth. After Ellard had singled and Gibby had doubled him to third, Andy McAuliffe, who had taken over the hurling chores in the fifth, knocked in two runs with a vicious single to right that put us in front, 8-7. In the last half, Andy disposed of the DEPENDABLE SLUGGER JOHN ELLARD KEL RUNS IT OUT O DONOGHUE LAYS ONE DOWN KEL TAKES A CUT -I 140 1-

Page 146 text:

out at the Academy was impressive to the members of our squad who were seeing it for the first time and they marvelled particularly at the meticulously groomed diamond. Both pitchers, Andy and Gabler, started off in effective fashion, not giving up a hit until the third inning. Our safety was a Frank O'Donoghue single that was not followed by any slugging, while Exeter bunched three singletons to register a lone tally in the same frame. Again in the fifth, O'Donoghue cracked out a single after Wally MacKinnon had walked, but there were two out at the time and an infield pop-up ended the stanza. ln the home team's half, we yielded an unearned run on an infield error, a sacrifice, a wild pitch and a passed ball. When we managed to get two men on in the sixth as the result of an Ellard single and a hit batsman, the Exeter infield came up with a snappy double play to avert the threat. The final New Hampshire register was forced across by McAuliffe and it made the final score read, 5-0. Weakness with the stick was our downfall for we rapped only four hits, two by Frank O'Donoghue and one each by Hilt Collupy and john Ellard. The game should have been an even closer pitchers' duel for Andy's 10 K's made up for the fact that he yielded 6 hits to Gabler's 4. The St. John's Prep game of May 27th was a contest that will long be remembered sadly by Andy McAuliffe. Reaching the peak of his pitching form, he had the visitors to our diamond swinging their heads off and he turned in the almost incredible achievement of 24 strikeouts, yet lost the contest by an ironical 3-0 margin. Having faced only 10 l BENCH SCENE -I l42 l-