St Sebastians School - Arrow Yearbook (Newton, MA)

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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-

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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-

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batters in three innings, our southpaw twirler was not ruffled when the Prep's Gorman led off with a double in the fourth, for he forced Lovejoy to ground slowly to the infield. A two base wild heave on the play, however, let the run score and gave the Prep the lead. In the sixth, more trouble developed when McAuliffe issued his third pass of the day and it was followed by a single to right center, sending the runner to third. A neat squeeze was then in order and it brought across the tally that made it 2-0. Tiring in the ninth, Andy forced across Downey with a final marker that ended the day's scoring at 3-0. From the other point of view, our batting eyes were still off and four singles, two by Ellard and one each by Gibbons and Lane, constituted the sum total of our offen- sive. Eight runners were left stranded on the base paths for want of a timely blow that might have changed the complexion of the game. Of the four hits collected off Andy, one was a triple by Dube with one down in the seventh, yet he expired on the paths when our moundsman turned on steam to fan the next two batters. Memorial Day brought us a visit from another Connecticut private school, Kings- wood Country Day of West Hartford, and just to prove that his performance against St. John's Prep was no accident, McAuliffe turned in another gilt-edged piece of twirl- ing, fanning 16 and giving up only 4 hits. After a double play had prevented us from registering in the second, we pushed across two runs in the third. Wfith one down, Bob Kelly lined a drive into left and advanced to second when Hilt Collupy was hit by a pitch. A walk to Ellard filled the bases and en- couraged Bill Gibbons to lash out a hot single that scored two tallies and allowed Gibby to take second on the throw to the plate. Henry Lane followed with a sizzling smash back at the pitcher, but it was caught in self-defense by the twirler and Ellard was doubled at third. Two innings later, Kel reached again, this time on an error, and, after allowing Bob time to steal, Ellard singled him in with our third run. For the second successive time, -1 143 Lane drove out a hard smash that was con- verted into a double play by the shortstop's fancy fielding to thwart any further scoring. To begin our sixth, McAuliffe doubled over the bank in right field and by some fancy footwork kept the pitcher in suspense on Quirk's sacrifice so that Ed also reached safely. This piece of luck was nullified, how- ever, when McNabb, batting for O'Donoghue and intending to bunt, popped up to the pitcher and Andy was doubled. With two down, Quirkie stole second and McGoldrick hammered him in with a well-stroked double and scored later on a Collupy single to give us our fifth run. Good base running meant a final tally in the seventh when Lane stole after getting a free ticket, continued to third on an infield miscue and rode in on the wings of a Quirk single. In the meantime, Andy was having one of his better days, allowing only one man to reach in the first four innings although he ran into a bit of a squall in the fifth. Two batters hit safely in that stanza and two walked - a combination which resulted in two scores when some loose ball-handling developed. The 6-2 final result was satisfactory enough, especially in view of the fact that we poled out 10 hits, with every player hitting safely except O'Don- oghue and his replacement, McNabb. A game originally scheduled with Cam- bridge High and Latin for May 21st had to be postponed because of rain, and it was played off june 2nd on our home diamond. The early innings saw us frittering away golden opportunities and leaving men stranded on the paths. We came closest to scoring in the third when, after Ellard had walked and stolen, Andy singled hard to rightg the fielder played the drive perfectly, however, and gunned johnny out at the plate with a beautiful peg. Up until the fifth, the visitors had succeeded in getting only one hit off Andy, but he ran into trouble in that frame when a single and double, helped along by two walks and an infield boot, added up to three big runs. At that, we were fortunate to escape so lightly, for Donahue was out on an attempt to steal home and I- 1