Chantilly baseball pulls slick upset of Forest Park
By Jason Mackey
The Chantilly baseball team pulled a stunning upset of the Cardinal District's Forest Park Tuesday night, earning a 3-2 decision to improve to 6-3 overall. The Chargers are 2-0 in the Concorde District and will host Fairfax Wednesday night.
Center fielder Chris Gentile walked on four pitches to start the game, and catcher Keith Morrisroe's triple – which began as a single, but took an awkward bounce off the grass – scored Gentile.
Designated hitter Danny Phillips followed with an RBI-single to score Morrisroe, which allowed Chantilly starter Jordan Johnson to begin his magic.
Johnson, considered Chantilly's No. 4 starter in the Chargers' rotation, found himself starting against one of the top teams in the entire state of Virginia.
No worries. He had a plan.
“I thought I had a pretty good game plan for them,” said Johnson, who earned the win with five innings of one-run ball, allowing five hits and striking out five while not allowing a walk. “Keep the ball low and outside ... mix up some pitches. Throwing first-pitch strikes was the main thing.”
Johnson allowed a hit in every inning except the fourth when he struck out the side in order. He minimized the impact of those base hits by not handing out any free passes, as the only run that Forest Park scored off of him came from two doubles in the third.
“Whenever you get a left-hander mixing 'em up like that, he's going to be successful in high school,” said Forest Park coach John Colantuoni, whose team dropped to 6-3 overall with the loss. “We were happy to see that [Chantilly coach Kevin Ford] threw one of his aces in there ... one of five or six that he's got.”
Senior Max Langford entered the game in the sixth inning to try and preserve the win, and while his initial inning might not have been that stressful, the seventh provided plenty of drama.
Chantilly scratched out an insurance run in the top of the frame, but Forest Park's Taylor Herrel reached on an error to start the bottom. After two Langford strikeouts, Chantilly second baseman Danny Bates barely missed a ball to his left, and suddenly the tying run was aboard.
As if that wasn't interesting enough, Forest Park's Bobby Schweir (2-for-4, 2 doubles, 2 RBIs) followed with a two-bagger to bring home Herrel. Langford walked Jonathon Wright to load the bases, but finally struck out the No. 3 hitter Jamie Blackwell on a blazing fastball.
“I don't know how fast he was throwing,” Colantuoni said, “but he had to be getting it up there.”
Langford's line (2 innings pitched, 1 hit, 1 unearned run, 2 walks and 2 strikeouts) wasn't pretty, but he still got the save. Morrisroe finished 2-for-3 with the aforementioned triple, RBI, run scored and also a walk, while Phillips, left fielder Pat Moore, center fielder Chris Gentile, first baseman Brian King and Bates all posted hits for the Chargers.
“That was a very big win for us,” said Ford. “To fight through some things and have some adversity there at the end and still come out on top, going into the week that we have coming up of Fairfax, Robinson, Oakton and Westfield, I think this was a big building step for us.”