Colin Brown delivers a pitch during the Mt. Airy Stars' 6-3 victory on Sunday. (Photo by Jonathan Vander Lugt)

by Jonathan Vander Lugt

After Mt. Airy concluded Sunday night’s game over Roxborough with a 6-3 win, the mood was distinctly different than that which befell Leeds Field the week prior.

If you’ll recall, the Stars got shelled by Loudenslager, 9-2, in a game that featured constant missteps.

This Sunday, though, you wouldn’t know it.

“They were focused from the first pitch of the game to the last pitch,” said coach Jeff Istvan. “We had no lapses. There weren’t any innings where one error led to another. We had nine guys on the field who were really locked in.”

Worth mentioning is the fact that Mt. Airy went down after a couple of bloop plays and one hard-hit ball led to a pair of Bandit runs in the bottom of the first – the same way its game against Loudenslager started – but the Stars held firm.

In that inning, Colin Brown and Avi Cantor, Mt. Airy’s battery, noticed that Roxborough was having trouble hitting the inside pitch. Going forward, they attacked that weakness, and once Brown’s curveball came around, it was smooth sailing.

Brown went through the next five and a third innings allowing just one run while striking out five.

In the meantime, Mt. Airy bats were dishing out runs in spades during the middle innings. Evan O’Leary-Lee walked to lead the third inning off, and after the next two batters struck out, it seemed like the opportunity was going to fizzle.

From there, shenanigans ensued.

Brown (5), Nate Teagle (11) and Tom Primosch (18) celebrate a rebound win after a 9-2 loss in their previous game.

Jaron Ellison reached on an error by the third baseman, plating O’Leary-Lee. Ellison then stole second, saw the throw in the outfield, and scrambled to his feet to head to third. He made it – barely – and when a wild pitch later in the at-bat caromed off the backstop down the third base line, he took off again.

It’s a play that, if he fails, seems like an obvious mistake. Momentum is a nebulous thing to try and quantify, but a mistake here could dash most of what the team had. With success, the added value is more than the run scored.

Roxborough couldn’t hold the tag, and he was safe. Sam Istvan walked later in the at-bat, setting the stage for more.

Testing a rattled catcher, the younger Istvan took off for second and slid in safely. Damani Okuri rapped out a single, and Jeff Istvan, standing at third, sent his son home.

“I love doing that with two outs. You force the other team to make a throw, a catch, and a tag,” Jeff Istvan said.

Staring down the catcher, in quite a feat of athleticism, Sam leaped and avoided the tag. He took a moment to get his wits about him – even he seemed surprised he didn’t get tagged – and quickly stepped on home plate.

“They made a throw and a catch but couldn’t make the tag,” Jeff Istvan said.

“You don’t teach it, and you don’t coach it. You always slide – except when it works to not,” he went on. “That’s what happened there.”

“I didn’t expect Sam to do that,” Ellison said of his leapfrogging teammate. “He’s aggressive on the basepaths, but I’ve never seen that. That was just a momentum-builder for us. It was great.”

Mt. Airy scored three more runs in the next inning on an RBI walk from Istvan and a two-RBI single from Okuri. From there, Mt. Airy had one rough inning – the sixth, where Brown gave up a few hits and a walk, allowing Roxborough to score its third run – but by and large, the game went smoothly.

Brown was stellar in his six and one-third inning of work, fanning six. At the plate, Okuri led by reaching base four times – on two singles and two errors – and driving in three. Tom Primosch pitched the game’s last fraction and went 2-for-4 at the plate, with perhaps the best struck ball for Mt. Airy on the day: a long double in the first. Istvan reached thrice, all on free passes.

“It was a fun game,” Ellison said. “We were aggressive the whole game. We got fantastic pitching from Colin. Everyone contributed – everybody put their bat on the ball. We ran the bases well, and took advantage of their errors.”

“We just went out there and got the dub,” he said.

This week, Mt. Airy has at least four games (their Saturday tilt against Bustleton was rained out, so they’ll have to make it up some time in the next two weeks). After that, they’ve got just a pair before league playoffs start.

“We really bounced back,” Brown said. “We kept our focus this week, as opposed to last. It was good to stay in it the whole game.”

“Everybody understood that one person can’t win the game,” Ellison said. “I learned it myself. In practice, we worked on our fundamentals, and built up some on-the-field chemistry. Everyone contributed.”