April 25, 2004
Box Score
OXFORD, Ohio - Errors came back to haunt the Miami (24-13, 7-3 Mid-American Conference) baseball team on Sunday afternoon at McKie Field as the Akron (20-14, 7-4 MAC) Zips scored four unearned runs in a 14-10 win. The Zips went deep on the RedHawks four times in the contest, scoring runs in each of the final five innings for the road victory.
Akron jumped out on top early with two runs in the first inning, but the Red and White responded with a big bottom half of the frame to take a 5-2 lead. Junior Sam Sellery (Carmel, Ind./Cathedral) plated one of the runs with an RBI single, but it was junior Brian Canada's (Fishers, Ind./Hamilton Southeastern) second grand slam of the week that cleared the bases and gave Miami the 5-2 advantage.
A resilient Akron offense retaliated with three runs of its own in the top part of the second stanza to knot the game at five apiece. An error prevented the RedHawks from turning an inning-ending double play, which allowed Charlie Lenhard to slap an RBI double down the leftfield line. Andy Capraruolo added insulted to injury by knocking a two-RBI single to center field to tie up the ballgame.
Miami briefly regained the lead, 6-5, in the fourth inning when junior John Slone (Cincinnati, Ohio/St. Xavier) ripped an RBI double to left field. Slone, who had gone 5-for-5 on Saturday, continued his torrid hitting on Sunday with a 3-for-4 outing to up his hitting streak to 14 games.
That was the last lead the Red and White would see, however, as the Zips jumped on sophomore Sam Shorts (Glen Ellyn, Ill./Glenbard East) and senior reliever Matt Raguse (Florissant, Mo./St. Louis CC) for three runs in the fifth to retake command, 8-6. All three runs crossed the plate in the fifth inning thanks to a three-run bomb by Bob Dubovec off Raguse. One more run off Raguse in the sixth inning brought the Zips' lead to three, 9-6.
Entering the weekend as the 13th team in the MAC in hitting, Akron did not look like it in the seventh inning when Terry Pettorini and Craig Welch crushed back-to-back home runs off freshman Keith Weiser (Hamilton, Ohio/Talawanda) to take a commanding lead, 11-6. Sunday's appearance was Weiser's first since his start at Rice on April 10.
The RedHawks battled back to within three runs, 11-8, by putting up a two-spot in the bottom of the seventh. Recording his fifth and sixth RBIs of the game with a two-RBI double was Canada.
However, same as they did earlier in the contest, the Zips responded in the top half of the next inning to negate Canada's ribbies. Akron scored three more runs in the final two innings, compared to Miami's two runs, to run the game to its final, 14-10.
Sophomore Geoff Orr (Orland Park, Ill./Carl Sandburg) plated Miami's final run of the contest in the ninth inning with a solo home run off Akron's Darek Stanfield. It was Orr's third home run of the season.
The loss drops the RedHawk's record to 7-3 in the MAC, which gives them a half-game lead over the Akron Zips who are 7-4 after the weekend series. Miami remains at home this week for a contest against local rival Cincinnati on Wednesday, April 28 at 3 p.m.
