By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
PITMAN — In the bottom of the third inning of the title game of the 51st Annual Joe Hartmann Diamond Classic — basically the South Jersey baseball championship — Mainland Regional High head coach Joe Smith went against conventional wisdom and took a chance, waving senior Chase Camac around third on Colton Donahue’s single to right-center.
Camac was one first base at the start of the play, took off stealing second and raced around the second base bag as the ball was laced into the gap. The ball was already on its way back to the infield as he was rounding third. He looked like a dead duck at the plate, but the relay was mishandled and Camac scored without a throw to give the Mustangs an early 1-0 lead.
As it turned out, that’s all they’d need at Alcyon Park, as senior University of Miami right-hander Jake Lodgek struck out nine in a complete-game shutout. Mainland, winner of eight straight games, cooled off red-hot Haddonfield (winner of 10 straight coming in) in a 4-0 victory that gave the Stangs their first Diamond Classic victory in program history. It was also the first for Smith as coach of the Stangs, as he lost the previous two years in the championship game as skipper of Delsea Regional.
Smith said he knew runs were going to be at a premium, and there was no way he was going to play it safe.
“Obviously, coming here for the third time in a row, I was like, ‘we have to get it done. If we don’t get it done, I don’t know how I’m going to handle it,’” Smith said. “That’s what we’ve been doing all year long, being aggressive, and the kids executed. We scored a few different ways today; usually we score on squeeze bunts, but today we scored on a home run, a balk, a base hit — these guys are finding ways to win.”
Donahue stole second and went to third on a throwing error, then trotted home with Mainland’s second run when senior catcher Brady Arena ripped a ball into the right-center field gap for an RBI single.
“We knew we had it in us the whole time. We had a tough first 15 games of the year, we started out 7-8, but we hung in there with Delbarton, we hung in there with St. Augustine Prep — we hung in there against a bunch of D-1 arms. We just had to keep grinding and keep going,” said Arena, who has a career-high 16 RBIs this season and is hitting .324. “This is an amazing feeling. I’m starting to lose my voice right now. I’ve been fortunate enough to be in three of these tournaments now, but we lost in the first two rounds the first two times. It’s amazing just to win a game, much less the whole tournament. After we beat Northern Burlington (in the second round) we thought we could win this whole thing.”
Haddonfield (16-5, 5-1 Colonial Liberty), the No. 24 seed in the 32-team tournament, worked out of that third-inning jam when shortstop Dan Keenan made a diving stab of a grounder up the middle, but 15th seeded Mainland (15-8, 7-5 Cape-Atlantic League American) struck again in the fourth with a solo home run from Christian Madamba — a senior who had all of six plate appearances in his career prior to this season.
“Christian has been a workhorse this year for us. This is his first chance to start and he’s done everything for this team,” Arena said. “He’s been a rock at third base. I’ve had the chance to know him for 13 or 14 years of my life, and this is amazing for him.”
Mainland added another run in the fourth on a balk, but the real story of the night was the dominance of Lodgek. One of the top arms in the state, he scattered five hits and allowed just one walk, and the only time he was in real trouble was when he allowed back-to-back singles to start the seventh. Smith had action going in the bullpen, but after a brief chat he knew it was Lodgek’s game to finish. Lodgek got the next three hitters on a pair of strikeouts and a flyout to end the game.
“With Lodgek, when this thing got pushed to Thursday, this is his first time pitching on four days rest. Usually he has five or six, so I didn’t know how he was going to respond, but I think this was his lowest pitch count of the year,” Smith said. “He was dealing. Everything was working, and he’s just a bulldog out there. He wasn’t going to come out if I wanted to take him out.”
“I’m at a loss for words right now, it’s crazy,” Lodgek said. “We definitely worked hard for it, every day at practice, one game at a time. I don’t know how many guys I struck out, but we definitely played good defense.
“I told (coach Smith) we were going to get this one, I wasn’t going to let him lose three times.”
“He said before the game he was going to dominate and I trusted everything he threw today. He hit every spot and you can’t ask for more from a starting pitcher,” Arena said. “We knew they weren’t going to be able to hit his slider, so we kept going back to it. We trusted his stuff, like we’ve been doing all year, and he’s come up big for us time and time again. Sometimes we left him hanging (offensively) but today we didn’t, we put up four runs against a really tough Haddonfield team. They have nothing to hang their heads about.”
Mainland had a really rough start to the season, as the Stangs allowed 23 runs in two games in their season-opening Cape-Atlantic League series against St. Augustine Prep, losing by mercy rule in Smith’s first appearance as the Mustangs’ new coach. Then, after a four-game winning streak, Mainland lost six of its next nine games. It took a while for Smith and his staff to figure out what this team was going to be all about.
“That’s what we said as a coaching staff — we don’t know who’s clutch, who’s better at second base, third base. We were shuffling people around throughout April. I said to myself that we were going to lose three or four extra games that we normally wouldn’t just because we don’t the signs, we’re looking in the dugout when signs are being given and some kids are looking, some kids aren’t. It took a while, but I’m glad we finally started putting it together,” he said. “We have a lot of first-year guys and they just believed. As a coaching staff, we just kept preaching to hang in there, we’re playing one of the toughest schedules in the state and we’re in every game. We gave a few games away, but we’ll end up winning those games in the end.”
“We’re putting the pieces together — playing good defense, getting bunts down, executing, throwing strikes,” said senior first baseman and pitcher Finn Haines. “In the beginning of the year we weren’t getting the bunts down when we needed to, weren’t throwing strikes, but now we have pitchers going all seven innings.”
When asked if he thought the Stangs could turn things around in time for the postseason, Lodgek said, “one hundred percent. Even with a rough start, we knew we were going to figure things out.”
It will be a quick turnaround for the Stangs, who host Cedar Creek today in the CAL Tournament semifinals, with the state playoffs looming in about a week and a half.
“We’ve had a lot of success over the years and been in so many championship games, and you can’t win them all. I always say that I just want my teams to play well,” Smith said. “You hate to lose when you’re not playing well, and that’s what we did a few times in championship games. If you play well and end up losing, it’s a tough pill to swallow.”
“I made a season goal chart, and winning the Diamond Classic was one of the top goals. To come out on top when everybody doubted us, against a team that was ranked No. 1 in South Jersey. We were the underdogs in this game, but I didn’t feel like we were underdogs,” said Haines. “(The last out) was a sigh of relief, we did it. Now it’s time to go win the CAL and keep this winning streak going.”
WHAT’S NEXT: Mainland hosts Cedar Creek in the CAL Tournament semifinals today at 4 p.m. Haddonfield hosts West Deptford on Saturday at 10 a.m.
