Nottingham’s Ronnie “Baseball” Voacolo hurled 6 and 2/3 innings, holding on for the win against the Hamilton High West. Photo by Michael A. Sabo
By Rich Fisher
Fish4scores.com
Apr. 13: An ace pitcher doesn’t just blow teams away every time he takes the mound. Sometimes he has to fight through adversity, figure things out, and give his team a chance to win even when things are a little shaky.
Ronnie Voacolo did just that Thursday in pitching Nottingham’s baseball team to a 5-4 win over visiting Hamilton West in a CVC Valley Division game.
After pitching out of slight jams in two of the first three innings, Voacolo was torched for four runs and five hits in the fourth. The Hornets still had runners on first and second before the senior right-hander got a strikeout and line out to end it.
“Those three runs helped a lot,” he said. “Seeing my team do that; they obviously wanted to pick me up and win the game as bad as I did.”
Over the final three frames, Voacolo allowed just one hit and struck out seven of the nine batters he faced before reaching the 110 pitch count-limit and yielding to Tommy McParland to get the game’s final out.
“After that fourth inning Ronnie was a different pitcher,” coach Jim Maher said. “You get balls up and you’re gonna get hurt if you make mistakes. He made some mistakes early and good teams take advantage of it.
“But that’s what you expect from your horse — they keep you in every game. Him and Nick (Houghton) have done that every time. They’ve pitched for us for two years, they give us a chance to win and we got our bats going.”
Hamilton jumped ahead on Tyler Springett’s two-run double and RBI singles by Ryan Beczo (after an outstanding at-bat) and Shane Hoffman.
Justin Wiltsey had allowed one hit and faced the minimum nine batters entering the bottom of the fourth before Tommy McParland led off with a momentum-building double.
“He’s our spark at start of the lineup for the last three years,” first baseman Bryce Fremgen said. “He’s been that guy. He sparked all of us. We’re scrappers, we’ll take runs when we can get them.”
David Scott followed with a single and Houghton hit into a fielder’s choice that should have been a double play. It drove in a run, and Fremgen followed with a bomb over the 360-foot sign in right centerfield to make it 4-3.
“Bryce with a huge hit, that was a big one,” Maher said. “I want to place him somewhere good in school, I told him if he wants to play at the next level he’s gotta hit with some power. And he hit that ball pretty good. To hit the ball out of this park, you gotta hit it pretty good.”
“It felt pretty good,” Fremgen said. “I felt I missed a little and got under it, but once it got under that blue windscreen out there it felt pretty good.”
With the deficit down to one run, Voacolo took it from there.
“That (rally) showed we have a lot of toughness and we know that basically, we can’t take that; what Hamilton did,” the pitcher said. “When we see that, we come back fired up. Like last year against Ocean City (in the state semis) they were up eight and we came back in the last inning and almost won. I knew we could do that this year, we’re a fired up team with a lot of toughness.”
Nottingham completed its comeback in the fifth when Christian Fuentes hit a leadoff triple, followed by Phil Rojek’s bloop single over a drawn-in infield. Scott plated Fuentes with a one-out double and, after Charlie Geiger came in for Tim Sharpley to fan Houghton, Hamilton walked Fremgen intentionally. Tommy Argiriou then showed some old-school toughness as he never flinched in getting hit by a pitch to force in the winning run.
After that, it was all Voacolo with a dash of McParland.
“I kind of slowed myself down a little bit,” Voacolo said. “As I got mad out on the mound I kind of hurried up a little bit and I was throwing balls a little high and outside and I missed my spots.
“When I came out the next inning I kind of slowed down when I came out to warm up. I hit my spots more and that inning obviously I adjusted better to hit my spots and put it where (pitching coach Mike) Petrowski wanted it.”
Voacolo’s bounce-back effort did not surprise his teammate.
“We all know Ronnie’s gonna bring his stuff and maybe some innings he’s not gonna have it,” Fremgen said. “You need to score runs to win a ball game anyway. You only need to score one more than the other team and we know he’s gonna shut them down for the rest of the way.
“Ronnie’s a competitor. You’re never gonna get Ronnie down. He’s Ronnie Baseball, that’s what his name is.”
It suits him.
Click here to read Hamilton’s Coach Mark “Gandhi” Pienciak take on the game.
