With two home runs this weekend and three overall, first baseman Kyle Armeny is still Penn's longball specialist. But third baseman William Gordon now has two of his own, having found a creative way to keep pace with his teammate.
Gordon had an inside-the-park home run in game one of Saturday's doubleheader, helping spark Penn to a 7-6 victory, its third in three games against Mount Saint Mary's.
"Rounding third, I thought I was going to be out," Gordon said. He said it was his first inside-the-park homer at any level of baseball.
Penn won both Friday games, 6-3 and 6-5, behind timely hitting and reliable pitching, but the Mountaineers snagged Saturday's second game, 4-3 in extra innings, to deny the Quakers (6-6) a four-game sweep.
Much of the Quakers' game plan centered on limiting the Mountaineers' power-hitting catcher, Josh Vittek, which they accomplished with varying levels of success.
Sophomore lefty Tom Grandieri started game one on Saturday but got the hook after yielding five runs in the third inning. Penn coach John Cole called on senior Andy Console in relief, and he used a sharp breaking ball effectively to keep Mount Saint Mary's (1-15) off balance for three and two-thirds innings.
The Quakers retaliated with a six-run fourth inning, punctuated first by Armeny's two-run bomb and then by Gordon's inside-the-park round-tripper.
With the Quakers one out away from victory, Vittek went to the plate as the potential winning run. Cole liked the matchup of Gordon's velocity - he moonlights as a pitcher - against the Mountaineers' cleanup hitter, and brought him in. Gordon picked up the save with one pitch when Vittek grounded to short.
In game two, Cole tried a similar strategy with Vittek batting in another crucial situation. After Grandieri's RBI single into right field tied the score at three in the bottom of the sixth, Cole lifted senior John D'Agostini and called on closer Reid Terry to face Vittek in the seventh.
Terry retired Vittek on a fly ball, but couldn't repeat the feat in extra innings. Vittek blasted an opposite-field solo home run in the ninth, and a botched bunt by freshman Adrian Lorenzo helped kill a Penn rally in the bottom of the inning.
The Mountaineers scattered 12 Penn hits in that game, holding the Quakers to three runs. Cole said that Lorenzo's bunt and a failed hit-and-run were the real culprits in Saturday's loss, which would have been easier to swallow if it had not been Mount Saint Mary's first win of the year.
"We wanted to get that last one, but three out of four isn't bad," Gordon said.
Gordon and Armeny both had conventional home runs in game one on Friday, and freshman Jeremy Maas earned his first victory on the mound.
Freshman Mike Mariano, now Penn's leading hitter after a torrid four games, laced an RBI shot in the sixth to give Penn a three-run lead, then made it four when the relay throw hit him and rolled into the Mount Saint Mary's dugout, allowing Mariano to jog home.
In game two, Vittek hit a three-run home run in the top of the seventh, but Penn second baseman Steve Gable had a sacrifice fly that broke a 5-5 tie, one of his four RBI. Terry closed for the save, and ace sophomore Todd Roth recorded the victory.
