By Steve Marovich, Part-Time Assistant to the Director of Athletic Communications
The Carthage College baseball team (1-0) picked up 43 degrees and an opening-day win on Saturday with a 6-2 decision over the California Institute of Technology (3-5) at the Kino Sports Complex in Tucson, Ariz. The game opened a 10-day, 11-game trip to the Tucson Invitational. The Red Men, leaving behind Kenosha's miserable, 28-degree temperatures, played under mostly-cloudy skies and temperatures in the low 70s.
Carthage took a 1-0 lead in the second inning when Clayton Taylor scored on the front end of the double play. Meanwhile, Red Men starting pitcher Pasquale Atteo, a Harper College transfer-junior, blanked Caltech for four innings before running into trouble in the fifth. With one out, Max Popken singled in a run. An error by Carthage third baseman Johnny Belskis sent Dawson Beutler to third, and Beutler scored on a sacrifice fly off the bat of Connor Moffat.
Brandon Hanik took over for Atteo in the sixth, with Carthage tying the game, 2-2, in the bottom of that frame. With one out, Vince Schwartz tripled and then scored on a sacrifice fly by Myles Farley.
The Red Men went up, 4-2, in the seventh. Luke Beckmann led off with a double, advanced to third on an infield grounder and scored on a double by Ricky Bergstrom. Bergstrom moved up on a wild pitch and scored on a passed ball. Carthage added a pair of runs in the eighth. Farley led off with a base on balls and scored all the way from first on a double by pinch-hitter Ben Levicki. Beckmann then singled up the middle to score Levicki and close out the scoring at 6-2.
Starting pitcher Atteo allowed two runs on seven hits, a walk and four strikeouts over five innings, but the win went to Hanik (1-0), who blanked the Beavers on two hits and a walk over the final four innings. "Atteo didn't throw too bad," said Carthage coach Augie Schmidt IV. "We just didn't play very good defense behind him, and we need to, because he's not really a strikeout guy. Brandon Hanik threw four really good inning for us, so that was really good news." Caltech hurler Ryan Ruscansky (0-3) took the loss and gave up four runs, three earned, on 10 hits and two walks over seven frames. Beckmann went three-for-four with a double and an RBI for the winning Red Men, while Colton Klein had three hits in five trips.
"First games are tough," said Schmidt, "and we didn't play very well. Now we can work on the things we messed up. I was a little disappointed with our hitting approach, but their pitcher kept us off-balance with a lot of breaking stuff. We didn't adapt to it, and all the sudden, it's a close game. But we had some guys come up with big hits at the end, and we'll take the win."
Caltech entered the game having won two in a row. Carthage has now won seven in a row at the Kino Sports Complex, including the last six games of the 2018 spring trip. The same two teams go it again on Sunday, starting at Noon Central Time. "I guarantee we didn't put any fear into Caltech today," laughed Schmidt. "We'll have to do better on Sunday."