By Steve Smull
LVBL News
SCHERERSVILLE – The Royals playoff hopes were resting somewhere between slim and none before their scheduled game with the Pilots even started on Saturday. So after the Pilots jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead after an inning, nobody would have blamed the Royals had they just mailed this game, and their season in.
However, quitting is not in the DNA of this Royals franchise, playing its tenth season in the Lehigh Valley Baseball League (LVBL).
The Royals (4-9) rallied to outscore the Pilots (6-7) by a margin of 11-1 over the next four innings to win this rain-shortened AA North Division contest 11-4. The win kept the Royals slim playoff hopes alive and bought them another meaningful game on Sunday.
The Pilots appeared to be well on their way to clinching the final playoff berth in the AA North Division during the bottom of the first. Williams Cabrera, Tyler Skibber, and John Devito smashed back to back to back doubles with one out to give the Pilots a 2-0 lead. An E-6 two pitches later made it 3-0 Pilots.
The Royals did not lay down.
Derrick Stair led off the top of the second with a double down the left-field line. After a strikeout, Antonio Pineda reached on an error to put runners on the corners. Player/manager Doug Brill dropped a bunt down in what appeared to be a safety-squeeze, but he got a bonus when he beat the throw to first base for a base knock. Brill got a second bonus when the throw went out of play, which scored Stair, and the Royals trailed 3-1. Robbie Mattei singled to left to score Pineda and Brill to tie the game at 3-3. Quentin Rutkowski singled to center to put runners on the corners. Rutkowski stole second base, and when the throw from the catcher went into center field, Mattei scored, and the Royals took a 4-3 lead. After Kyle Marason walked, Evan Byrne singled to score Rutkowski to make it 5-3 Royals. After a strikeout, Stair singled in Marason, and the Royals led 6-3.
The Royals kept scoring. Jaime Cicalese singled to left to start the top of the third inning. He stole second and went to third on an errant throw by the catcher. After two strikeouts, Cicalese scored after Mattei reached on an error to give the Royals a 7-3 lead. Later, with two outs in the top of the fourth inning, Jim Finnen walked and promptly scored on another Stair double, and the Royals now led 8-3. The double was Stair’s third hit of the game.
Meanwhile, Rutkowski settled down and got into a groove on the mound for the Royals. He allowed just two hits and one unearned run after the first inning. And his teammates would get him more runs in the fifth inning after the Pilots got that unearned run in the bottom of the fourth. With two outs, Mattei got hit by a pitch. Rutkowski singled, and Marason followed with an RBI single, and he and Rutkowski advanced an extra 90 feet on an outfield error. Byrne then doubled in both runners to give the Royals an 11-4 lead.
As dark clouds rolled in quickly, Rutkowski retired the Pilots 1-2-3 in the bottom of the fifth. When the heavy rain hit in the top of the sixth, the game ended.
The Royals joined the LVBL in 2011. And player/manager and LVBL League Ambassador Doug Brill and his franchise have a great story.
For more than ten years running, the LVBL has an annual player draft before every season. In 2011, the league’s player draft was held at Lehigh Valley Baseball Academy, and there was a huge turnout. Eighteen players went undrafted. Brill was one of them.
League President Ron Cahill suggested that these unwanted players band together and start their own team. Brill stepped up and volunteered to be the manager. He remembers that day well.
“We were so grateful that Cahill did not say, ‘Hey guys, sorry you didn’t make it, maybe try again next year,’” said Brill. “Instead, he suggested we start our own team. That says a lot about the intuition of Cahill and the league to say, ‘Hey guys, come out and play ball. Be your own team.’ We went out there and took some lumps during our first year, but we stuck with it.”
“And we are still doing the same old thing,” continued Brill. “We have always been a home for players who don’t otherwise have a home. Which is perhaps what this league is about, too. We have players on this current team that went undrafted two or three years ago. I promised to find them a team. I looked around and had no takers, so I added them to my team.”
Brill thought he had a shot at a league title in 2014.
“We merged two teams that year,” said Brill. “We had high hopes and ended up narrowly missing the playoffs. It was a disappointing season. But I learned a lot of things that year. It was a very talented team. But I learned that talent doesn’t always work when it comes to winning games. Culture is what does work.”
By 2018, Brill had his team culture established. He picked up a couple of quality players and won the championship in the 25+ American Division that summer.
As for the 2020 pandemic-stricken season, the Royals have taken their lumps. However, they are fighting hard right down to their final game.
“It’s been a rough year with a lot of injuries, some absences over virus concerns, and the guys we’ve brought in to fill the roster didn’t work out,” said Brill. “But we’ve played proud, which is all I ever ask, and here we are on the last weekend still standing with an outside shot at making the playoffs.”
Two guys who played key roles in Saturday’s win for the Royals echoed many of the same thoughts of their manager.
Robbie Mattei is a veteran player who was 2-for-3 with 2 RBI and two runs scored on Saturday against the Pilots.
“The group of guys we have on the Royals are battle-tested,” said Mattei. “We have been in those high-stress kind of games. As a group, we didn't let the early 3-0 deficit dictate how the rest of the game was going to go. And ‘Q’ pitched a hell of a game once he settled down. We made an early adjustment after the first inning, and it paid off.”
‘Q’ is Quentin Rutkowski, who, after a subpar first inning on the hill, allowed just two hits and one unearned run over the last four innings. He also went 2-for-4 with two runs scored at the plate for the Royals.
“This team never gives up,” said Rutkowski. “We have a lot of heart and are led by a manager who has nothing but love for the game. We played out of position, and we played hurt. The Royals are a great team to play for even though our record isn’t that great this season.”
“As far as my pitching, arriving late to the game didn’t help matters,” continued Rutkowski. “I don’t throw a lot of warmup pitches anyway, so the first inning usually isn’t my strongest inning. But throwing to a great catcher like Mattei really helps. After an adjustment, I got locked in and started hitting my spots.”
The Royals won this game with nine guys. And their ninth guy, Rutkowski, arrived about five to ten minutes before game time.
Brill harkened back to the past one more time when describing how the win against the Pilots went, with references to being shorthanded, the impending darkness, and the rain that ended the game, to boot.
“This game almost feels like a childhood game when you would just get nine guys together and go out and play until its dark or play until it rains,” Brill said. “And that’s what we did today.”
Pilots player/manager Rob Colon would love to accomplish what Brill did in 2018 and see his team win a title. On Saturday, he was looking for one more regular-season win to make the 2020 LVBL playoffs.
However, the Pilots skipper was impressed with how the Royals played on Saturday.
“They came to play today,” said Colon, whose team failed to clinch the final playoff spot on Saturday. “To be honest, I am not worried. We lost. It is what it is. Hopefully, tomorrow, we get a ‘W’ and not have to worry about making the playoffs anymore.”
Notes: Colon and his Pilots would earn the #4 playoff seed with a 4-3 win over the Bandits on Sunday.
