Bowie uses five-run sixth inning to earn victory over Roosevelt

By James A. McCray III
Prince George's County, Content Manager

Bowie Bulldogs baseball head coach Bob Estes said after his team's 8-5 victory over Eleanor Roosevelt that his team was "determined not to lose."

And throughout Saturday afternoon's contest, the determination was displayed up and down the Bowie line up, with one classic example coming in the sixth inning.

Entering the sixth frame of the game, the Bulldogs were down 5-3.

After Dylan Thompson batted in the eventual game-winning run to take the lead 6-5, teammate David Webster hit a slow roller toward the middle of the infield only two batters later.

As Webster hustled down the baseline, he took his momentum, slid on the ground and stretched his arms toward the base. The hustle managed to get him to the base safely and allowed another run to cross the plate for the Bulldogs, showing just how much the game meant to him and his teammates.

Thompson and Webster helped Bowie to a five-run sixth that propelled Bowie to the 8-5 win.

"That was huge," Webster said of the sixth inning as he also finished with 3 RBIs for Bowie. "That's probably what won us the game. We just got all of the momentum going through that and after that we just didn't want to lose."

On the play in which he slid into first base to allow a run to score, Webster added: "I was catching and I was just dead tired. I could not swing the bat hard, so I just made contact with the ball, hustled as fast as I could, and I saw that is was going to be a really close play. ... I just laid out, and I got there."

"There were several of them actually," Estes said of examples of his team's will to win. "There was [David's] play at first base, and what a play that was, and our first baseman Jon [Smock] sprained his ankle severely in the first inning. He could hardly walk and he is playing out there on one leg and wouldn't let me take him out.

"To me, both of those guys showed the kind of attitudes that it takes to win, especially in Jon's case with it swelling up on him."

Eleanor Roosevelt (5-1) scored 3 runs in the bottom half of the third inning to overcome an early 2-run deficit.

Cameron Sanders put the first run of the day on the board, and Jamie Morris knocked in the third run of the inning on an RBI single.

Sanders also added an additional RBI in the fourth and teammate Aaron Alston plated the fifth and final run for the Raiders in the fifth.

However, head coach Andrew Capece and the Raiders fell just short on its home field.

"I was happy because we were up 5-3 going into the sixth inning and in a position to win," Capece said. " ... But we spotted them the [sixth-inning] rally. We gave them the tying runs on base with nobody out. ... We are not where we need to be. A couple of plays here and there and maybe we would win, but we are still a distance away.

"We know we have to get better if we want to beat [Bowie] or any of the top teams in the league."

The meeting between the two teams was a rematch of last season's 4A South region championship game, a game in which Roosevelt won to advance to the state tournament.

Thompson, a junior, was a part of the varsity team last season that fell to Roosevelt in the title game.

"Now we can be on top of them [in the standings]," Thompson said. " ... Hopefully next time we come and do the same thing."

Thompson also knocked in the run in the sixth that gave the Bulldogs the lead during the scoring outburst.

"I wasn't really nervous at all," he said of his at-bat. "I was just trying to put the ball in play and maybe they would mess up or something, and I hit a shot over the first baseman and got the guy home."

Bowie's Mike Grzeskiewicz added an RBI double in the win as the Bulldogs improved to 7-1 overall on the season with the victory.

E-Mail: James A. McCray III

Bowie 8, Eleanor Roosevelt 5
Bowie       --  1 0 1   0 1 5   0  --   8  10  1
Roosevelt  --  0 0 3   1 1 0   0  --   5   7   2

WP: Cerverizzo   LP: Martinez 
Extra-base hits: 2B B (Grzeskiewicz); ER (Sanders)