Redemption comes a year later for Hudson’s Hawks
Tauber has career day in Hudson Catholic’s mammoth rout
A year ago, Hudson Catholic’s baseball team played for the HCIAA Coviello Division championship, trying to claim the school’s first county championship in any sport in almost a decade.
While the Hawks were facing Memorial for the title, their starting All-Star catcher, Rick Tauber, was nowhere to be found. He was home in bed, battling a severe case of strep throat, complete with a high 102-degree fever. Tauber tried to get out of bed that morning to join his teammates in their quest, but he couldn’t even stand up straight before crawling back under the covers.
“I felt like I let them down,” Tauber said. “I felt like I owed them something.”
While Tauber was lying in bed ill, his teammates were sickened by what would take place on the Cochrane Stadium turf. The Hawks held a 2-0 lead going into the final innings of that game, only to have an umpire’s ridiculous call turn what should have been a grounds-rule double into a silly grand slam homer, giving Memorial a 4-2 victory and the HCIAA title that for so long had eluded Hudson Catholic.
Last Saturday, as part of the HCIAA’s “Super Saturday” festivities, the Hawks had their chance at finally undoing the wrong that was done to them nearly 365 days earlier. True, the opponent this time was Bayonne, not Memorial, and some of the players from last year’s team had graduated and moved on to college, but it was a shot at redemption for many of the Hudson Catholic players, including the one kid who missed all of the shenanigans a year ago.
“Just hearing all that talk and garbage, I was going to whatever I could to make sure that it wasn’t happening again,” Tauber said. “We talked about it all year. We wanted to have another chance.”
Tauber wasn’t about to let his teammates down this time, having the best day of his fine career on the biggest stage of all. He collected three hits, including a monstrous homer, and drove in six runs, leading Hudson Catholic to a stunning 17-7 victory over Bayonne to capture the HCIAA Coviello title, the school’s first Hudson County championship of any kind since the baseball team won the honor in 1995.
While there weren’t many people who were shocked that the Hawks emerged as the premier team in the HCIAA’s top division, the outcome and the manner in which the Hawks won was certainly surprising.
For one, Bayonne just doesn’t get smacked around the ballpark often. The Bees, under the tutelage of brilliant head coach Phil Baccarella, had never fallen victim to the 10-run rule (where a game is stopped after five innings with one team ahead by 10 or more runs) in Baccarella’s prestigious term as head coach.
The Hawks banged out 14 hits, including three each for Tauber, winning pitcher Chris Lugo and standout first baseman Rob Zapata. They raced out to a stunning 8-0 lead in the second inning and never looked back.
Secondly, if someone would have said before the game that Hudson Catholic ace pitcher Lugo would have surrendered seven runs, you would have thought that the Hawks would have been in serious trouble.
“I really thought before the game that this was going to be a low scoring game,” Hudson Catholic head coach Derek England said. “And if someone told me Chris would struggle, then I thought we would be in for a long day.”
Lugo, who has been recently drawing rave reviews from professional scouts because of his pinpoint fastball and sharp-breaking curve, didn’t have his best stuff on Saturday.
“The team picked me up today,” Lugo said. “The team did it all. Tauber kept me up. He kept us in the game. He had an awesome game. He’s my No. 1 guy.”
“I noticed early on that Chris wasn’t himself,” Tauber said. “I could tell he didn’t feel his best. I told him that since he wasn’t 100 percent, that I would take over for him.”
Which is exactly what Tauber did – taking over the entire game.
England was pleased with the way his team responded, especially after the disappointment of a year ago.
“Although this was a new year, you could sense that they were not going to leave anything out there this time,” England said. “They weren’t about to let a call take it away from them. They came out here and hit the ball. I really don’t know whether they were thinking about what happened last year at all.”
Need proof?
“It was definitely disappointing,” Lugo said. “When something like that happens, it makes you work harder. It puts a fire in you and makes you want it more. We thought about it a lot throughout the course of the year. We all wanted another chance.”
“We knew that this year was definitely ours,” said Tauber, named the game’s Most Valuable Player. “We kept thinking about this all year long.”
In that respect, redemption is certainly sweet.
“It was definitely worth it,” said Lugo, who credited his little sister, Hoboken softball ace Natalie, for giving him the inspiration to muddle through on Saturday. “It was definitely worth the wait.”
England said that he was proud of his team’s accomplishments, winning the county title in just his third year as head coach.
“It’s amazing how things have a way of working themselves out,” England said. “It’s an awesome feeling. I never thought that we would be able to accomplish this (a county championship) so quickly. And for us to be undefeated in the county, you can’t ask for anything better than that. These kids worked hard all year and it’s a credit to them. They took it upon themselves to turn things around. This was a great effort by everyone.”