Foxes find winning magic on baseball diamond

P.J. Simone scores the winning run and the Foxes rush out to celebrate a walk-off win over Rye. JIM MACLEAN PHOTO

By JIM MACLEAN 

Every high school sports season has its ups and downs, and sometimes all it takes is a little spark to completely turn the season around.

Fox Lane baseball coach Matt Hillis knew his team was under a lot of pressure to win, coming into the year as defending champs facing a tough schedule, it could not have gone worse as the Foxes started out the year with six-straight losses. Hillis knew he had to come up with something to calm them down and remind them to just have fun and play Fox Lane baseball.

Enter “Jobu,” the voodoo doll from the baseball movie “Major League” to provide a little inspiration. 

Jobu's mojo

Hillis found a Jobu doll and gave it to his team and the results have been magical, five-straight wins, including a 3-2 comeback, extra-inning, walk-off win over Rye on April 26, as Sean Singleton drove in P.J. Simone for the winning run in the ninth inning and the Foxes celebrated at home. The Foxes followed that up the next day with a 6-4 win over Harrison to make it five in a row.

What a difference a week, and a doll, can make in the wide world of sports.

“That felt great, a very long game, my bat has not been what I want it to be and I knew I had to come through,” Singleton said after the win over Rye. “The biggest thing for us is we knew this is the team we can be no matter how we started. We faced some tough competition, but we weren’t playing up to par at all. Coach brought in Jobu from ‘Major League’ and that kind of flipped the switch for us, and now we’re having fun, we have momentum, some good team wins and we have to keep it going.”

Coming together

It wasn’t just a win over Rye, but how they pulled out the victory shows how much the team has turned it around. Down to their final out, trailing 2-1 in the bottom of the seventh inning the Foxes staged a rally to tie it up. 

Andrew Brauning delivered a two-out single to start it off. Evan Stackle ran for Brauning and stole second, Singleton walked, and starting pitcher Jackson Carroll then delivered an RBI single to score Stackle and send the game into extra innings.

“Moose (Brauning) came up big with that single to lead it off and I knew I had to come up with a hit,” said Carroll. “Starting off 0-6, winning the last four, especially two against an amazing team like Rye, doing that is huge and we’re coming together as a team, figuring out who we are and getting the wins.”

Then in the ninth inning, P.J. Simone led off by driving a deep double to left field, moved to third on a sac fly, and Singleton drilled a single to drive him home and start the celebration.

Carroll had hurled a gem as the starting pitcher, going six and two thirds innings and throwing 105 pitches, and J.J. Lombardo came on strong in relief, shutting the Garnets down over the last two and a third innings to get the win on the mound.

“Jackson was incredible, and coming in I knew I just had to throw strikes and our guys would have my back and make the plays,” Lombardo said. “These last four games, it kind of clicked and we’re getting in our groove.”

Finding their groove at the plate and on the mound has made the difference, no magic, just hard work, and Hillis is confident they can keep it going for a strong second half of the season.

Good things to come

“Huge win, we’re looking better, still some things to work on, but the beauty of this team is their work ethic was the same at 0-6 as it is now at 5-6, a sign of good things to come,” Hillis said. “Jackson was amazing, and Lombardo was absolutely phenomenal. I can’t say enough good things about what they did. Brauning has been hitting the carp out of the ball all year. We’ve been struggling with two outs and Jackson came through and that was big. Simone has surprising power and he showed it there, and Sean needed that hit and came through, a good team win.”

Singleton kept his hot bat going into the next game as the Foxes hosted Harrison the next day. Singleton went 3-for-4 at the plate with a double and scored two runs and drove in another. He also was on the mound as the starting pitcher, recording six strikeouts, and Max Polinsky came on in relief to close out the victory. Polinsky also did the job at the plate with two RBI. Janak Bain went 2-for-3 with a triple and a run scored, and Joe Rodriguez had a double and a run scored for the Foxes.