By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — It seems as though there might be some magic woven into the renovations at Fred Handler park.
Since St. Bonaventure returned to its newly upgraded facility (March 31), it has gone 7-1 at home. The most recent of those wins, a 5-4 victory over defending Atlantic 10 champions Rhode Island, gave the Bonnies their first series sweep of the season.
“Yeah, 7-1 at home, we feel really good about playing at home. We’ve had a lot of good luck here,” Bona head coach Jason Rathbun said. “We’ve played some close games, got some big hits. It’s just different. It’s different when you’re not in hotels and traveling in buses, and you’re sleeping in your own bed. You get used to your own routines and it’s big for us. I think getting a sweep like this against the defending champs from last year says a lot about where we want to be and where we’re headed.”
The Bona pitching staff certainly had its moments in the sweep-clinching game. Notably, both starting pitcher Tristan Ciampa and closer Joey Calabretti worked their way out of a bases-loaded jam with one out on the board. For Ciampa, it preserved the narrow 3-2 lead the hosts had built through 3.5 frames. For Calabretti, it put the tally in the win column.
It was a second save in as many appearances on the bump for Calabretti, whose mentality was praised by Rathbun.
“Joey Calabretti’s a pretty mentally tough kid, he’s a competitor,” Rathbun said. “I came to the field today and just asked him how he was feeling. I was asking more in the sense of, ‘are you OK to play left field?’ ‘Are you OK to hit?’ And he was like, ‘I got an inning today if we need it.’ And I was like, ‘that’s not really what I was asking you, but that’s good to know.’ Then, when the game got tight a little late, … he came out and got the job done.”
Both the Bonnies and Rams connected for a significant amount of hits on the day, and frankly not much less would have been expected considering how the entire series transpired. Over the course of the three games — two of which were played in a double header on April 17 — the sides combined for 61 hits and 11 home runs.
“The message with the guys has been to swing the bat harder,” Rathbun said. “I think that we’ve been a little too indecisive with check swings, not letting our hands go and being free. … If the pitch comes in and you’re fooled by it, just swing through it, get a good swing off instead of these check swings, balls bounced in the infield, we’re not driving the baseball as much. I think we did a good job. It was a good hitting day yesterday, too, with the wind. The weather was good for bats yesterday, so we were able to capitalize on a good hitting day.”
St. Bonaventure’s Anthony Fernandez (27) connects on a pitch against Rhode Island. Fernandez went 2-for-4 with two RBI and a home run in the Bonnies win over the Rams. (Spencer Bates)
The source of two of Bona’s nine hits in the series finale was Conner Vercollone, who had just three hits in all of April leading up to the game. For Rathbun, it was special to see an experienced player such as him double up on the day.
“He just hasn’t had the same success he had last year, but you still have that confidence in that kid,” Rathbun said. “He’s played a lot of innings here, playing a lot of games for us. So we kind of know what we’ve got with Connor. You can’t just ride the hot waves, you’ve got to ride the cold ones too. He’s got a lot of experience, he doesn’t hurt us defensively, he does a good job, and he just battles. He’s a great kid. We’re happy he was able to get a couple hits today.”
There is an air of familiarity around Bona’s recent run of form.
Rathbun noted that last year has been similar to this year in that his team spent a lot of time away from home early in the schedule, which made finding a routine difficult. But now that they are having some stretches of games at home, he has seen a bit of a rhythm develop. He hopes that this season, they can get some momentum going soon enough to perhaps find a way into the A10 tournament.
“We’ve kind of done this before, we did it last year too, where we’re on the road a lot early, and we’re fighting and clawing, and then we get a run at home,” Rathbun said. ”It’s probably a big reason why we won seven of our last nine in the conference last year, because we had a good run at home. Hopefully, we can kind of do the same thing this year. It seems like we are. We got a big one next week, Dayton’s right ahead of us. … So, we’re still in this. We gotta go out and win the series that we’re supposed to win down the stretch, (and if we) get a little help here and there, I can see us maybe finding the back door into this tournament.”
St. Bonaventure will head north to face Niagara on April 21 for a mid-week fixture before hosting Dayton for its next A10 series.
