Calvert Hall baseball outslugs Curley late for 13-6 win

With a roster that only has three seniors and a starting lineup that featured just one Wednesday, Calvert Hall baseball is learning new things every day as it discovers its identity in the early season.

On a blustery, windy day at rival Archbishop Curley, the Cardinals showed they won’t shy away from a good fight.

Falling behind twice in the middle innings, the Cardinals responded with big at-bats and poised pitching from freshman reliever Ryan Grayson to turn a close game into a 13-6 win over the Friars in Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference play.

Calvert Hall (7-2, 2-0 MIAA) scored three runs in the fifth inning, two more in the sixth and broke the game open with a six-run seventh to beat the Friars (5-3, 0-2) for the second time in three days. The teams will complete their weeklong, three-game set, new in the MIAA this season, at Calvert Hall on Friday with opening pitch set for 6 p.m.

The Cardinals pounded out 14 hits in the game — six for extra bases — and Grayson pitched two-plus innings of shutout ball for the win. Junior shortstop Travis Peitz hit a home run and two doubles, scored three runs and drove in two. Senior first baseman Mike Copenspire hit a two-run homer, drove in another run with a single and scored three times.

“This is one of those fields where no lead is safe, so anything can happen and the wind was really howling today and we just kept battling and did what we had to do. In this type of scenario, you got to battle, battle, battle and we did,” Calvert Hall coach Brooks Kerr said. “Bats came up big and we got some good late pitching … This is a quality win. Curley does a great job and swing it well over there so nothing is really safe with any lead and we kept going.”

The Friars trailed 2-1 entering the bottom of the fourth when they took their first lead at 4-2 on Elijah Ritter’s one-out, three-run homer.

But the Cardinals were quick to reclaim the lead in the top of the fifth with a solo homer from Peitz, and then a two-run blast from Copenspire made it 5-4.

The Friars took back the lead with two runs in the bottom of the inning, highlighted by a homer by Derek Poole, before the Cardinals took over the game.

Grayson came in with the bases loaded in the fifth to get Austin Sealey to popout to keep the deficit at 6-5. Then the Cardinals’ bats finished the job.

In the sixth, Nathan Rodriguez and Copenspire hit consecutive run-scoring singles for a 7-6 lead and then Tom Pilarski, Kaden Barmer and Peitz each hit doubles in the six-run seventh.

“We know they’re a good team and it was going to be a tough one to the end and luckily we pulled away with some insurance runs,” Copenspire said. “These early wins give us good momentum because these MIAA games are only going to get tougher from here.”

Poole led the Friars’ 10-hit attack with the homer and an RBI single. The Friars hope to get on the winning side against the Cardinals on Friday.

“They just did everything better than us today. They fought the elements a little better and did what they had to do,” Curley coach Joe Gaeta said. “So we just got to fight harder next time.”