Top of the Mountain

In the span of three games in the Lancaster-Lebanon League playoffs, the Ephrata baseball team has seen almost everything. From a shutout victory to a comeback win, a two-hour rain delay to extra innings.

Thursday night, the Mounts made sure to add one more thing to their collection — the 2018 L-L championship.

Falling behind Lampeter-Strasburg early, Ephrata battled back for a 9-6 victory in this year’s final, capping the game with a fly ball to left field and a dogpile near the mound at War Memorial Field.

The victory marks the 14th consecutive win of the season for the Mounts, and their first league title since 2015.

“It’s awesome, superexciting. That was a great team effort,” senior Adam Schwartz said. “It feels great to have won as a freshman and now in my senior year.”

L-S jumped out to the early lead, plating a pair of runs on consecutive singles from Kris Pirozzi and Aaron Snyder. The advantage was short-lived, however, as Zac McGillan responded with an RBI single of his own for Ephrata, and Nate Young scored on a grounder to second base.

The lead would change twice more before Ephrata’s breakout fifth inning, as both teams played small ball and capitalized on their opponents’ mistakes.

Connor Blantz drilled the first pitch of the second inning to the rightfield fence, tripling and then scoring two batters later to give L-S a one-run lead. Ephrata (20-3) once again found the equalizer as Ricky Bromirski scored on a grounder, an inning before the junior drove in the third run of the fourth inning with a sac fly.

“The game kind of fit our style,” Ephrata coach Adrian Shelley said. “It kind of played into the way we like to play, with just constantly trying to keep them guessing — are we going to bunt, what are we going to do? We got some key hits though tonight.

“It was two-out runs,” Shelley said of the key to the win. “We had some key two-out runs and some guys put some balls in play with two strikes and two outs.”

It looked like the tide was finally turning in Ephrata’s favor as the Mounts entered the fifth inning with a 6-3 lead and Schwartz settled in on the mound, retiring eight consecutive batters. But L-S (16-5) would pull within one, turning one hit and a pair of errors into two runs — including a steal of home.

After reaching on an error, Joe Meck got caught in a rundown between first and second, giving Dereck Eckman the opportunity to sprint home. While the throw reached Bromirski in time, Eckman slid around the glove to touch the plate.

“You never feel safe in a game like this,” Bromirski said. “They’re a great team, they can put up five runs any inning, so we just had to keep fighting, just keep doing what we know how to do.”

Ephrata went right back to work in the bottom of the fifth, with Schwartz drawing a leadoff walk and scoring on Tim Beever’s base hit to right. Another hit and another error brought in Blake White and Beever, and proved to be an insurmountable lead. The Pioneers tacked on another run in the sixth as Blantz doubled in Pirozzi, but Ephrata reliever Hunter Johns got a big strikeout to strand Blantz, then set down three out of four batters in the seventh to seal the win.