Stunning loss in Group I finale still hard to swallow
A few days had passed since Hoboken High School dropped perhaps the most heartbreaking baseball game in the school’s history, a 14-12 setback to Middlesex in the NJSIAA Group I championship game last Saturday in Toms River, and head coach Buddy Matthews was still trying to come to grips with what took place. In 22 years of being a head baseball coach at Hoboken, Matthews has enjoyed his fair share of exultation and also his incidents of disappointment.
Nothing could match what took place Saturday. In fact, Matthews still didn’t have legitimate answers some 48 hours after the game took place.
“I still don’t know what happened,” Matthews said. “What can you do? We just lost it and we lost it in a hurry.” The Red Wings had the state title in the bag. The three prior setbacks in state championship games in 1990, 1992 and 1994 were about to become a slice of ancient history. The kids from the Mile Square City held a commanding 12-7 going into the final inning. The celebration was at their finger tips. The state title was just three outs away.
The Red Wings’ pitching ace, Devon Inhulsen, had just retired Middlesex in order in the top of the sixth inning. He was breezing his way towards history.
However, when the top of the seventh occurred, things suddenly changed. Inhulsen, a bulldog and a workhorse all year, couldn’t record a single out.
“He never showed signs of anything,” Matthews said. “He never lost it at all during the season. Not once. In that instance, you have to stick with your ace and hope he gets you through it. He had just breezed through the sixth inning, getting them 1-2-3. What do you do? I told Devon it was his game to finish.”
But it all unraveled for Inhuslen in the top of the seventh. The pitcher with usually impeccable control walked the first batter and then the third. Then, the Middlesex barrage of hits began.
“They got three straight hits on first pitches,” Matthews said. “Bang, bang, bang. By the time I turned around and started thinking of getting someone up, it was 12-11. I’m telling you, Devon didn’t show any signs of tiring or weakening. It just all came apart.”
Matthews tried to reason how a solid baseball team would just collapse in the top of the final inning, steadfastly holding on to a commanding five-run lead. Perhaps the fact that the Hoboken High School senior prom was the night before the state title game.
The majority of the players on the team attended the prom and got home at a reasonable hour, but had to be ready at the school at 7 a.m. for the sojourn down the Turnpike and Parkway to Toms River in time for the 11 a.m. start.
Sure, teenaged bodies respond better than most, but that still was asking a lot of the kids.
It could have very well been that the Red Wings hit the collective wall because they were having a good time the night before. It’s known that proms are scheduled far in advance of state championship games. And no one could have ever known that the Red Wings were bound for a state title game, considering they hadn’t been to one in 13 years.
“Who knows?,” Matthews said again, when the prom was brought up as a possible culprit in the uncharacteristic collapse. “At this point, I really don’t know.”
By the time Matthews could get the faltering Inhulsen out of the game, the damage was done. Orlando Bolanco enticed a batter to hit a ground ball to get the Red Wings out of further trouble, but by then, the game was already tied at 12-12. The seemingly insurmountable lead had evaporated quicker than a pool of cold water on the blacktop in Hoboken on a sweltering August afternoon.
In the bottom of the seventh, the Red Wings had a chance to win the game, but one of their best runners over slid second base after successfully reaching the base on a steal. The runner was easily tagged out.
Still, Matthews kept the faith.
“I really thought it was just a matter of time before we pulled it out,” Matthews said. “We went to extra innings and I liked our chances.”
Even though the momentum was clearly on the side of the other team, especially after the frantic seventh-inning comeback.
In the ninth inning, Middlesex scored two runs and pulled out the victory.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this, not for this team. There was too much going on in the positive, like team chemistry and camaraderie, like destiny.
Last October, Red Wing slugger Erick Cruz lost one of his best friends, former Hudson Catholic pitcher/third baseman Rubiel Mercado, who was tragically killed in an automobile accident while attending college in Alabama.
When the season began, Cruz wrote “19” in script on his jersey, honoring his long-time friend. br>
“Rubiel meant a lot to me,” Cruz said. “I put the 19 there so I could keep him in my heart. He meant a lot to all of us. I’ll never forget him. I loved that kid. I played on teams with Rubiel since we were little. I can always see him smiling. I felt like I played this year for him, that I was following his dream. He’s going to carry us to a win. I know we have him in our hearts.”
Cruz continued before last week’s game.
“We have a chance to be a team of destiny,” he said. “It’s a great feeling to have that chance, to do something that a Hoboken team never did before.”
And that destiny all unraveled in the matter of
one-half of an inning, in the matter of a few minutes. It’s almost unfair. You have a bunch of close-knit kids getting as close as humanly possible to an overall state championship, getting the opportunity that a Hudson County public school hadn’t achieved since 1988 (Memorial won the overall Group IV title and the national title) and a chance to do something that a Red Wing team never did.
And it all fizzled like an Alka-Seltzer in the matter of minutes.
“This one hurts more than any other,” Matthews said. “We were up five runs with three outs to go. We were five runs ahead of a team that we were better than and we couldn’t find the three outs we needed. I can’t even explain it. This hurts way more, because of the circumstances. But what can you do? You try to convince yourself it was a great year.”
It was. The Red Wings won 25 games, captured the HCIAA Seglio and the NJSIAA North Jersey Section 2, Group I title for the second straight year and made everyone catch Red Wing baseball fever in Hoboken once again, much like it happened in 1990.
“We have no regrets,” Matthews said. “We won one more game than we won last year. We had a great group of kids who played well together. I really hope we can build on this. We have a lot of experienced players coming back. There are no regrets. This team was special when it came to the respect of chemistry. They all knew how important that chemistry was.”
This should have been a state champion. There should have been a parade down Washington Street, with the players on a float and bands playing. This was a sense of pride for the city where baseball was believed to be invented and first played. Baseball and Hoboken have been synonymous for years. This was a chance to bring back some of that baseball glory and folklore.
It’s so totally unfair that it ended this way. This band of brothers deserved so much better.