ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – This one was never in doubt. Silver jumped out to an 8-0 lead after two and never looked back as they defeated Cherry 14-2 to win the best-of-five Cherry-Silver Series three-games-to-one.
“The series started out really well,” Silver co-captain Aaron Siple said. “In game one we had Toller (Boardman) throw lights out and it was a battle. We came out on top luckily in that one. In the last two wins the sticks really showed up, and that was great to see.”
Chris DeVito hit a two-run double in the first and a towering two-run homer over the batter’s eye in dead center in the fourth to lead the Silver attack. Andre Vigil hit a three-run double as part of the five-run second and later scored on Lane Milligan’s double.
“We wanted to get ahead early and then just keep going from there,” Silver’s other captain, Jake Cole, said. “Sure enough, we put up three in the first, and when you get up like that it’s a good confidence-builder.”
Luis Gonzalez hit a solo home run in the fourth almost exactly to the same spot DeVito hit his, and Ryan Padilla added an RBI double later that frame to account for Cherry’s runs.
Conner Rusch started on the mound for Silver and went 5.1 innings and allowed just two runs on six hits. It was the third solid pitching effort for Silver in the series, following the efforts by Toller Boardman and Mike Gould, and not surprisingly, Silver won all three of those outings.
Silver’s two captains were in agreement in their pick for Series MVP: junior transfer shortstop Dalton Bowers.
“I definitely think Dalton Bowers carried the show for us,” Siple said. “I think he started off every game by getting on base out of the leadoff spot. He was really the spark plug that helped us go.”
Bowers reached base four times, including a leadoff single in the first, a walk in the second, and a solo home run in the fourth, to pace Silver’s offense, which blasted eight extra-base hits, including triples by Siple and Matt Reyes.
Gonzalez and Padilla each went 2-for-3 for Cherry.
The honorary coaches for this game were Larry Harrison, Larry Rainosek and Dick Knipfing for the victorious Silver side, and Sam Bregman, Rick Ronquillo and Josh Ayala for Cherry. Ronquillo and and Ayala can be seen below doing the customary 25 pushups required of the losing coaches. The final game of the series will be Saturday evening at 5.