The JV Baseball Dons are enjoying a great season.  The team is deep, and has benefited from consistently great pitching and defense, and had some solid offensive performance earlier in the season.  More recently, Dons’ bats cooled off some, but they are still finding ways to win ballgames, although admittedly they’ve been relying on good baseball fortunes a bit much for scoring runs over the last few games.  Saturday’s home game against St Mary’s Berkeley was one of those games.  The Dons continued the pattern of starting slow, keeping the game close, scratching runs out, and somehow making runs happen in late innings.  St. Mary’s Panthers were ready to play, and quickly jumped to a 2-0 lead after 2 innings, while the Dons took their time to get going at the plate, and couldn’t get any runs across despite loading the bases in the 2nd.  The Dons got on the board in the 3rd: James Stadt snagged a lead-off walk, swiped 2nd, moved up to 3rd on a bad pick-off attempt throw, and scored on Keagan Goddard’s hard-hit grounder up the middle.  Keagan came around to score in the inning on another bad throw from the Panthers’ catcher to tie the game up at 2-all.  After an uneventful 4th, the Dons moved ahead by a run when Paul Kuhner got on base with a well-executed/poorly-fielded bunt, moved up to 2nd on a passed ball, got to 3rd on Peter Thorn’s sac bunt, and scored on Jake Boselli’s RBI groundout (his first of the two in the game).  Panthers managed to tie things up again in the 5th, and so it was anyone’s game when the Dons were batting in the bottom 6th.  With one down, Sully Bailey lifted a single to the right, Paul got walked on 4 pitches, and then with runners on 1st and 2nd, Jack Giorgianni sent a grounder up the middle that was fielded cleanly by the SS, but the short throw to get an out at 2nd (and possibly an inning-ending double play) bounced off the fielder’s glove and into the outfield.  The game turned on that play: everyone was safe, Sully scored all the way from 2nd, Paul ended up on 3rd, and was knocked in by Jake with another RBI groundout, and Jack scored on a passed ball.  That score stood, although James Stadt almost stole home, reaching the plate at the same nanosecond as the pitch, but the call was Strike 3 with two down, and so the run didn’t count.  Dons 6, St. Mary’s 3.  The game couldn’t be exactly classified as “clean”, with Panthers committing more errors (5) than Dons base hits (4), and the Dons contributing a couple of errors of their own.  Only 1 of 6 runs given up by Panthers’ pitchers was earned, and the Dons were credited with just 3 RBIs (on 1 base hit).  Jake led the team with 2 RBIs.  Keegan did a bit of everything, collecting a hit, a walk, a run, and an RBI.  Paul had a hit and crossed the plate twice.  Everett Glass and Sully had a hit apiece.  Jack Giorgianni made the winning run happen in the 6th, and if there was such a thing as an RBI ROE, he would have been credited with it.
Once again, Dons got outstanding pitching, this time from a trio of pitchers.  Peter Thorn got the start, and threw strong 3 and 1/3 innings, giving up 2 runs on 5 H and 1 BB, with two Ks.  Brady Quinn stepped in as a set up man in the 4th, and gave up one unearned run over 1 and 2/3 innings.  Jack Giorgianni closed the game out with 2 innings of nearly-perfect pitching: 0 R, 0 H.  The Dons team defense wasn’t as dominating as usual, but it was still pretty solid.  The outfield play was stellar again, and the Dons infield turned a couple of double plays…a classic 6-4-3 in the 5th, and a quick 4-3 in the 6th.  Everett shone at 2B, helping turn 2 DPs and picking up 5 assists.
Having crossed the season half-way point undefeated, Dons have a major showdown of undeafeated’s coming up next Tuesday, when they travel to San Ramon Valley HS to face 7-0 Wolves.