ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The 2014 Cherry-Silver Series concluded Saturday evening with a 9-6 Cherry victory. Silver, though, won the series courtesy of a 14-2 win Friday night.
Silver jumped out to an early 4-0 lead in the first on four singles, three walks and two sacrifice flies. Dalton Bowers, batting leadoff again for Silver, reached base to start the game for the fifth straight time. He finished 1-for-3.
Cherry, however, battled back in the late innings.Down 6-4 after four, they scored four in the sixth and two in the seventh to take the victory. Freshman Carl Stajduhar had a very nice game for Cherry, as he went 2-for-3 with a solo homer in the fourth, a double in the sixth, a walk in the seventh and three runs scored.
Luis Gonzalez finished 2-for-4 with a two-run double in the third, while Jack Zoellner led Cherry with three hits and also had a two-run double, but his was in the decisive sixth inning.
“We let them coach themselves and make the decisions themselves,” head coach Ray Birmingham said. “It’s huge for them to see how gameday works. A lot of them, especially with 15 new faces, regress to what they did in high school after months of training them to do it the right way. Now they start to get it, and hopefully this gets most of the jitters out of the way for the time we play last year’s No. 1 (team) Oregon State (in our season-opening tournament in February).”
The series allowed the coaches, led byBirmingham in his eighth year with the program, one last look at the players as they make their final roster decisions.
“These guys are champions,” Birmingham said. “We’ve won four straight Mountain West championships, and we’re going to make it five-in-a-row. They know that to make this club takes a lot. It takes a serious baseball player. There were a lot of things on the line this week to help make us a champion and help some guys make the club.”
UNM opens the season at the Surprise Tournament in Surprise, Ariz. They face Michigan St. and Northwestern before playing two against the Beavers. You can find the complete schedule here.
In Saturday’s contest Jeff Grady, Jeff Gilkey, Scott Hoover and Dee Dennis were honorary coaches. As the coaches of the losing team, Grady and Gilkey did 25 pushups at home plate after the game (see left).
Be sure to check out the photo gallery from the series at the bottom of this story.
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