Tri-County Baseball · Western Massachusetts · Est. 1929
Spartans
Baseball Club
Grabowski Walks It Off as Spartans Split Doubleheader with bankESB
After absorbing a 12-1 nightcap opener, DOC answers with a 7-6 walk-off win, surviving a bullpen scramble and a finger injury to even the day
A doubleheader has a way of erasing a bad afternoon, and DOC Spartans needed every bit of that on Saturday at South Hadley High School. Hours after falling 12-1 to bankESB behind a three-hit afternoon from Grayson Loos, the Spartans came back out and flipped the script, riding a Kyle Grabowski walk-off to a 7-6 win in the nightcap and salvaging a split.
It wasn't a clean game for DOC, and it didn't need to be. The Spartans' pitching staff was forced into early improvisation when starter Camera lasted just two innings before exiting with a blister on his pointer finger — the kind of freak injury that can unravel a bullpen plan in a hurry. Loos, who had been the story of the opener with his bat, came back to the mound for the Spartans' opponent and worked 1.2 innings in relief, but it was Loos who ultimately wore the loss, with Chipman picking up the win for DOC out of the bullpen mess.
Whatever chaos unfolded in between, it all came down to one swing. With the game knotted in the late innings, Grabowski delivered the walk-off hit that sent South Hadley High School home happy and gave the Spartans a measure of revenge in the very same day they'd been blown out by 11 runs. For a first-year program still finding its footing, a walk-off win over a club that had just dominated them is exactly the kind of moment that builds belief.
The opener, by contrast, belonged entirely to bankESB and to Loos in particular. He went 3-for-4 at the plate, singling in the first, second, and fourth innings, and the ESB offense jumped on DOC immediately — Emmett Garfield walked and Nick Burns followed with a double down the left-field line in the top of the first, with both runners coming around to score. ESB kept piling on from there en route to the 12-1 rout that set the stage for the afternoon's reversal.
Taken together, it was a split that tells two very different stories — one of an ESB lineup clicking on all cylinders, and one of a Spartans club that refused to let a lopsided opener define the day. DOC will look to carry the momentum of the walk-off forward, while ESB will look to bottle whatever it found in that first-game offensive outburst.
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