Diamondback Weekend a Tale of Two Pitchers

By Tom Jalana
for TJSN.com

Published: August 14, 2004

Charles Dickens could not have written it better nearly 100 years ago when he wrote “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” and the Evergreen Park Diamondbacks’ weekend series against the Morton College A’s certainly made those words ring true.

Diamondback pitcher Ed Sochacki took the mound in 90-degree heat and threw a gem of a game and the team’s solid defensive play contributed to a 2-1 victory over the A’s. The A’s threatened three times during the game but failed to score a run until the 5th inning. Sochacki (5-2) scattered six hits and a walk over 6.2 innings while striking out nine and allowing one unearned run. It was his highest strikeout total since opening day, 2003.

With the D-backs up 2-1 with two outs in the bottom of the 7th, confusion beset both home plate and field umpires. With the count 2-2, Sochacki missed with a slider on the outer portion of the plate. The home plate umpire called ball four and awarded first base to the batter. Sochacki immediately ran to the home plate umpire to dispute the balls and strike count but was overruled by the field umpire.

“We were tracking his pitches,” said Manager Joe Cipolla, “and in our books, the count was two-and-two before the fifth pitch was thrown to the batter. The umpire blew the call.”

Sochacki opted to remove himself from the game with the runner on first and Pete Gubricky came in relief for the save opportunity.

“It was really hot out there and I lost my focus when the umpire lost track of the count,” Sochacki said. “I didn’t want to make a mistake to the next hitter by leaving a fastball down the center of the plate, so it was best that I pulled myself out of the game.”

Gubricky, who came on for his second save opportunity of the season, gave up a duck-snort to left field but induced the next batter to ground out to short. As the ball was hit, the base runner from second interfered with third baseman Brett Flood on the play and was called out for the third out of the game.

“It certainly got exciting,” said Gubricky “but the bottom line is that we won 2-1.”

In game two of the double header, Thad Sochacki took the mound in search of his fifth victory of the season but was rudely greeted by the A’s bats as they came out swinging, looking to avenge the morning loss.

The A’s scored 10 times over the course of 6 innings while the Diamondback offense failed to get on track. Sochacki allowed 7 earned runs along with a tape-measure 3-run homer to deep left-center field to the A’s clean-up batter. The homer was the first walk-off slaughter rule homer allowed by Diamondback pitchers in the team’s history. The shutout was also the first time this season that the D-backs failed to score a run and by far was the worst pitching performance for the younger Sochacki this season.

Things got so bad for Sochacki that his father, who was in attendance, left the game in the fourth inning to go home and watch the Cross-town Sox-Cubs game on WGN. When asked to comment, Mr Sochacki said that “Thad should not have been watering the infield between games and he should have been resting on the bench because he knew he was pitching the second game.”

Thad Sochacki closed his locker room door and refused to comment to the media.

Said Cipolla, “I thought we got great pitching in game one and that we would be in a good position to sweep but it’s hard to win in this league when you spot 10 runs to the opposing team and your offense fails to score. We’ll just learn from our mistakes and come out fighting our next game.”

And so the story goes…

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Tagged with: Ed Sochacki, Evergreen Park Diamondbacks, Joe Cipolla, Pete Gurbicky, Sergio Senese, Thad Sochacki

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