MANCHESTER – The script picked a bad time to change.
All postseason long, the Bow baseball team had been the one making the crucial plays, the gotta-have-it ones with the game on the line. Throwing runners out from the outfield. Two-out hits. Escapes from jams with runners on base.
That had been the act. But in the final performance of the season, another team was playing the role.
The fifth-seeded Monadnock Huskies, led by indomitable pitcher River Fish, were the ones delivering the hits, the throws and the pitches, and they were the ones that got to celebrate on the Northeast Delta Dental Stadium mound after defeating No. 6 Bow, 4-2, to win their seventh state title.
“I’m not disappointed for myself, I’m disappointed for them. I wish we could have finished it,” Falcons Coach Ben Forbes said. “As a whole, we played our style of baseball. We did what we needed to do, and ultimately I just don’t think we hit the ball well enough today to notch the victory.”
Fish, the Division III Player of the Year, had a lot to do with that. The senior, one of seven for the Huskies (16-4) that had to watch Campbell celebrate on the same field after losing in last year’s final, was terrific Saturday, striking out seven while going all seven innings and coaxing 125 pitches out of his tired right arm.
“I just came in with a strong mindset,” he said. “I think (last year’s loss) motivated us more to win, honestly.”
The Falcons (14-6) seemed to have him figured out in the fourth inning, however. Austin Beaudette led off with a single with the game tied at 1, and Fish – who pitched a complete game against Raymond in the semifinals earlier in the week – walked Conner Lorenz on four pitches to put Beaudette in scoring position.
This was Bow baseball, scrapping hits together against a pitcher who had been cruising but was beginning to look tired. And true to form, Christian McDonald got ahead in the count 3-1 before rapping a single up the middle. Forbes waved Beaudette around third, looking for the go-ahead run.
The only problem was that Monadnock center fielder Kyle Keating came up firing to the plate, and his throw was slightly up the line but in plenty of time to get Beaudette. Bow ended up getting the go-ahead run anyway when Lorenz came in on a wild pitch, but Mac Kimball followed with a fly ball to shallow right, and again, Forbes rolled the dice and sent McDonald from third.
Same story. Colin Shanks’s throw was on target, and McDonald was out to end the inning. Bow had the lead and Fish at 75 pitches, but everyone in the dugout knew there should have been more.
“Playoffs, in high school, you’ve got to take the big risk,” senior first baseman Jeff Bell said. “It’s not very often that two outfielders are going to make two consistent, back-to-back throws at the plate. At that point in the game, we needed the runs.”
It was instantly reminiscent of the Falcons’ quarterfinal and semifinal victories, which featured the go-ahead runs thrown out at the plate by Lorenz and Jack Corriveau, respectively.
“You’ve got to force teams to make plays,” Forbes said. “We’ve seen that against us a couple of times. We don’t have a lot of big power hitters that are going to drive balls in the gap for extra base hits, and sometimes we get those little small singles and we’ve got to try to score on them.”
The notion of stealing runs off the board, however, seemed to re-ignite the Huskies as Shanks walked and Pierre Brouliard singled to center. Falcons starter Brendan Winch battled back with a strikeout, however, and it looked like Bow could sneak out of a jam just as it had done countless times during its playoff run.
Once again, the narrative took a turn. Fish blasted a Winch fastball into the right-center field gap for a double, scoring both runners. An uncharacteristic throw-away into left field trying to catch Fish stealing third allowed him to make his way home, putting Bow down 4-2 and taking some air out of a Falcons crew that had flourished in tight spots.
“I think that young, inexperienced look on their face kind of came out a bit,” said Forbes, who had a freshman and four sophomores in his starting lineup. “They got a little deflated by that inning. They started to battle back, though.”
Given the lead, however, Fish wasn’t going to give it back. The control woes that popped up in the fourth vanished, and the senior was back, pounding the strike zone. He fanned two in the fifth, stranded a runner at first in the sixth and worked around a leadoff walk in the seventh to extinguish the top of Bow’s lineup, the final out coming on a grounder to second that kick-started a celebration at the mound a year in the making.
“My arm’s gone. It’s gone,” Fish said, smiling. “I probably couldn’t throw another inning.”
Fish gave the Huskies the first lead of the game, smacking a two-out single to score Chris Weeks in the second. Weeks led off the game with a triple, but Bow got the next two outs before a hit batter and Fish’s hit followed.
“Player of the Year in our division, and there he was,” Forbes said. “He was a tough out today.”
Bow answered in the top of the third. Ben Kimball laced a single up the middle, moved to second on a bunt and came home when Ben Guertin’s soft liner fell in front of second base and couldn’t be fielded cleanly, going in the book as a single.
That tied the game at 1 and set up a duel between Fish and Winch (six innings, five hits, four strikeouts), one the Falcons’ lefty could have won were it not for the lapse in the fourth.
“I was hoping for a shutdown inning there,” Winch said, “but sometimes you don’t get what you asked for.”
The somber tones didn’t hide what had been a spirited run to the brink of a championship after a losing season last year and season-ending injury to defending D-III Player of the Year Evan Vulgamore.
“There was talk from a couple of kids I know from other schools, they’re like ‘You’re not going to be anything, you lost Evan, he’s your only kid that can hit,’ ” Bell said. “But kids came in and filled big roles.”
Winch added, “You’ve got to be happy you made it here. We had a great year. We did what we had to do to get here, even if all odds were pretty much against us.”