NORFOLK
There was only one thing standing in the way of Granby clinching its second straight Eastern District baseball title Friday – Maury pitcher Coby Cowgill.
And he was an imposing presence, too. Struck out 20 batters in nine innings the last time the two teams played and fired a no-hitter against Churchland in a recent start.
While Granby won the first game in 10 innings, Cowgill was one strikeout and one inning stronger this time as the Commodores topped the No. 9 Comets 4-1 in 10 innings to force a playoff for the district title and the accompanying Eastern Region playoff berth.
Maury (17-3 overall, 12-2 district) will play at Granby (12-7, 12-2) Tuesday.
“This was the biggest game of Coby’s life and he pitched the best game of his life,” marveled Maury second baseman Drew Williams, who drilled two doubles and scored two runs.
No one will argue that. Cowgill pitched no-hit ball for five and two-thirds innings, finished with a two-hitter, walked only two batters and fanned 21 in going the distance.
”I guess because this game meant everything to us, maybe it was my best game,” Cowgill said.
Cowgill also ignited Maury’s three-run uprising in the 10th inning, ripping a two-out single that scored Williams and snapped a 1-1 tie. A two-run double by Brian Bashara quickly followed.
Cowgill, who appeared to be tiring an inning earlier, struck out the side to put an exclamation mark on his performance.
Commodore coach Jack Baker said there was never any doubt he was staying with his ace in extra innings, even though the clicker in his pocket had Cowgill at 90 pitches at the start of the seventh inning.
”I asked him how he felt after the eighth,” said Baker, who politely declined to disclose the final pitch total. “Coby is pretty honest. He said he felt good and strong. Once he told me that, there wasn’t going to be anyone warming up in the bullpen.”
“I’ll go until I know it is time to quit,” said Cowgill, who improved his record to 5-1. “I don’t know if it was the adrenaline or what, but I felt pretty good. I have to take my hat off to Granby, they hung in there. They can hit mistakes. I was throwing a lot of different stuff so they wouldn’t see any tendencies.”
Cowgill made only one mistake and Granby shortstop Andrew Frazier sent it over the left field fence for his seventh home run, tying the game at 1-1 in the bottom of the seventh.
“That homer could have devastated Coby and the team, but we bounced back and showed a lot of character,” said Baker, whose team started out 10-0 before running into offensive problems and falling two games behind Granby at one point.
Maury’s hitting woes continued in this game. Granby ace Greg Abetz limited the Commodores to four hits through the first nine-and-a-third innings and pitched his way out of a man-on-second-with-no-outs situation in the fifth and a bases-loaded-with-one-out jam in the sixth after Maury scored its first run on a fielder’s choice by Bashara.
Abetz pitched a complete game in Granby’s 4-3, 10-inning win over the Commdores last month.
”Cowgill was great, he always seems to be against us,” said Comets coach Robbie Butler. “But Greg pitched a great game, too. He’s more of a ‘spot’ pitcher while (Cowgill) is more of a thrower.
”We’re disappointed we didn’t win, but you can’t beat a talented team like Maury every time. The good thing is that we get another opportunity Tuesday on our field.”
The Maury players are pretty happy about having the same opportunity.
”This is a big deal to us,” said Williams. “We really want that No. 1 seed in the tournament. We’ve had to come back a long way to get a shot at it and now we’re down to just one game.”
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