South Broward Uses Power, Small Ball, To Defeat Taravella

The South Broward Bulldogs out-powered the Taravella Trojans early, and then used small ball late to secure a 9-5 victory in the preseason opener for both teams last night at Deerfield Beach High School.

After yielding a run to Taravella in the top of the first, South Broward erupted for four runs of their own in the bottom half of the inning. The runs came on the strength of long back-to-back homers by Craig Kirouac and Colin Tinsdal, and signaled danger for Bulldogs head coach Joe Giummule.

“We stress the little things. We’re not always gonna hit three run homers and solo homers, or back to back homers,” said Giummule, “That was almost the worst thing that could have happened to us is to do that.”

The Trojans showed next inning that they were up to the task of playing long-ball on this windy night, and answered South Broward’s blasts with a pair of two-run homers of their own. Those long balls came off the bats of catcher Jordan Gleicher, and first baseman Andrew Wallach, and they gave Taravella a 5-4 lead after just two and half innings.

Both teams settled in on the mound until the bottom of the sixth when Bart Mugione drew a lead-off walk for South Broward.  Ken Rasor laced a sharp single up the middle.  Josh James drove in a run with a towering double just short of the center field fence for his third hit of the game.  Tinsdal then picked up his second RBI and third hit, singling in James, stretching the South Broward lead to 7-5.  Makana Gilliland closed out the scoring with a blistering 2-run single past short.

“The thing I was pleased about was some in-game adjustments some of our players made,” Giummule said. “Kid hits a home run his first at bat and then hits a base hit to the right side on a breaking ball. Kid goes 0-2 his first two at bats, first high school baseball game, strikes out looking, comes back and then drives in two with a base hit late in the game.”

On the not so lighter side of things, the lights did go out at precisely 9:30pm, ending the evening for Taravella in the seventh inning with two outs and two strikes on the batter.  The game was called with nothing more than one more out at stake on this opening day.

The lights going off was an unfortunate ending to the first game of the year for the two teams, but not nearly as funny as the sprinklers going on at precisely 9pm. Both issues proved how important pre-season games are, not only for the players, but for the field staff, too.

The winning pitcher for South Broward was Tinsdal, who tossed three and two-thirds scoreless innings while chalking up five strikeouts.  For the Trojans, Joseph Nicolosi recorded five K’s in hurling two shutout innings.

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