The baseball team's play mirrored the weather at historic Jack Coombs field this past weekend, as the Blue Devils went from downright ugly to just short of perfect in losing three games in a row to eighth-ranked Georgia Tech. Following the 7-6 loss on Sunday Duke stands at 30-11-1, 7-8 in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
"After getting beat on Friday, I thought we would come out and win on Saturday," said Duke head coach Steve Traylor. "We came out and played real hard Saturday, we did not play real well in some spots defensively, then when yesterday was over I thought we would win today."
After dropping the first two games of the series 20-2 and 6-2, the Blue Devils entered the ninth-inning of Sunday's game holding a 6-4 lead. The Blue Devils built the lead on the strength of a six-run fourth inning, and the solid starting pitching of Ryan Jackson.
Entering the ninth, however, the gutsy Jackson was on his last legs, having given up two runs in the eighth on Jay Payton's second homer of the series, his seventh of the season.
With Josh Shipman and Craig Starman ready to go in the bullpen, Traylor elected to stay with the man who is normally the closer in these situations, Jackson. And it almost worked.
"Late in the ballgame, [Jackson] is not going to beat himself," Traylor said. "He is going to throw strikes. They may hit the ball out of the ballpark, but he is not going to walk players, and he is not going to lose his composure. He is a gutty, tough competitor, and he is the guy we wanted out there."
Leading off against Jackson for the Yellow Jackets was David Newhan, who promptly drove an 0-2 pitch over the wall in right to close the gap to 6-5. It was the Yellow Jackets fourth homer of the game and tenth of the series.
Following a base hit through the infield by Matt Barr and a failed sacrifice attempt, Ryan Ritter dribbled a single though the still drawn-in infield to put runners on first and second with catcher Jason Varitek coming to the plate. Varitek brutalized the Duke pitching staff over the weekend, as the former Olympian hit three tape measure shots into the construction site beyond the right-center field wall over the weekend.
"I was just trying to get him to hit a ground ball, hopefully hit into a double play," Jackson explained. "Because the way he was hitting the ball I did not expect to get him to strikeout. When he swung through the ball I was real surprised."
Jackson worked the count to 3-2 before stepping off the rubber. After a pick-off attempt to first, he unleashed the pay-off pitch, a curve ball to Varitek. The Tech slugger swung and missed, and with the runners moving, catcher Matt Harrell unleashed a perfect throw to third to seemingly nail McIntyre and end the game.
"[At that point] the game is over, as far as I am concerned," Taylor said. "We knew what they were doing, we were looking for the pickoff on the previous pitch. We were then looking for a strikeout. We got it, we got a great throw from our catcher, and we did not get a call."
"It was a big out," Jackson said. "We thought we had the game won after that."
However, an out-of-position umpire missed the call, and Georgia Tech had a second chance.
"I had a good view of it,"' Harrell recalled. "It's quite simple -- the ball arrived [at third] before he did, so he is out. It was an unusual play."
And the Yellow Jackets are too good of a team to waste a second chance.
Following an intentional walk to Payton to load the bases, pinch-hitter Nomar Garciaparra calmly stepped to the plate, and, after watching the entire series from the end of the bench, lined a single up the middle to plate both McIntyre and Ritter and give Tech a 7-6 lead.
"Nomar is a guy who has ice water in his veins," said Yellow Jacket head coach Jim Morris. "He is really a clutch player. Four times Varitek has been walked to get to [Garciaparra] and he has responded with two homers, a double and a single. We were looking for the right opportunity to use him today."
Duke fought back in the bottom of the ninth. With two outs, Mike King chopped a ball down the third baseline which took a bad hop over the third baseman's head. Scott Pinoni then walked, leaving two men on for Sean McNally.
But the storybook finish was not to be, as Binkley blew three pitches past a swinging McNally to earn his third victory of the season.
"It was a pretty gutsy effort by our kids to come back after that major disappointment," Traylor noted. "To have the top half of the inning end like that, then we get two quick outs, but we stayed in there, and had a great hitter [McNally] up in a situation where we would want him up. And if the situation happened again, I would want him up again."
Duke had grabbed the lead in the fourth inning as they capitalized on three walks and an error to score six runs. The rally was highlighted by Mike Olexa's three-run homer.
"We did not play really well the first two games," Traylor said. "We did better [Sunday]. We had good pitching, some clutch hits, we did everything we needed to do to win that baseball game."
"We played our hearts out today," Jackson said. "We just came out on the short end."
On Saturday, Georgia Tech snatched the second game of the series, 6-2, behind the pitching of David Albert. Albert went seven innings allowing only two runs on seven Blue Devil hits.
The Yellow Jackets scored twice in the first before Duke tied the game on Olexa's double in the second inning. Georgia Tech responded with two in the third on a Payton home run, and then scored two more in the fourth to build a 6-2 lead.
In the opener on Friday, the Yellow Jackets shelled Blue Devil ace Scott Schoenenwies for nine runs on seven hits in just two and a third innings. When Schoenenwies left, the barrage continued, as the Ramblin' Wreck scored five more in the fifth, with the highlight being a Varitek home run which carried into the first floor of the still-under-construction Terry Sanford building in right field.
The Blue Devils will try to start a new winnig streak when they again take to historic Jack Coombs field to do battle with Division II power Morris Hall on Tuesday.
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