The rundown in the first, gone wrong…it led to three Minster runs and a lot of…woulda’, coulda’, shoulda’. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Julie McMaken Wright)
A botched rundown in the first inning, and four errors turned out to be more than Braylon Cordonnier could pitch around in the Division VII semi-final at Canal Park.
Akron, OH – You are, of course, familiar with the line: It’s not how you start, but how you finish?
Well…not always, as experienced by the Russia Raiders Thursday afternoon in the second Division VII state semi-final at Canal Park.
A botched rundown play following a single by Minster’s James Niemeyer in the first inning led to a pair of unearned runs, a 3-0 deficit, and the kind of coach’s nightmare that comes back week after week after week until next March and the 2026 baseball season.
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And you can bet that Russia coach Kevin Phlipot wrote some things down. Like, “note to self…work on the run-down play (a lot) before next year.”
Because…after that 3-0 hiccup in the first Cordonnier settled down on the Canal Park mound to pitch no-run, two-hit baseball over the next five innings to give his team a chance to scrape their way back against Minster starter Lou Magoto. Magoto, a strike-throwing machine, would, of course, have one of his best days that didn’t end up as a no-hitter (against Montpelier), striking out 12 and giving up just 6 hits in a complete game 5-3 win.
But…Russia, while trailing 3-0, did come back to score a run in the bottom of the fifth when a pair of Magoto walks set the table for a Cordonnier RBI infield single to make it interesting…3-1.
But believe it or not, Minster scored in the top of the seventh on a near-carbon copy of the rundown in the first, allowing two insurance runs to score on a Magoto single…5-1, Minster. Lou had a pretty good day.
Russia would come back in the bottom of the seventh to score twice, highlighted by a Cordonnier triple to right field that closed the gap to 5-3. And then…Magoto struck out the 21st out of the game, his twelfth of the game. And oh, what could have been. Let the woulda’, coulda’, shoulda’s begin.
Rewrite that old saying. It’s not how you start, but how you start AND finish.
“So, maybe we should have played it differently, and if we do that only one run scores,” said Kevin Phlipot. “But we left some plays out there that we know we should have made, and some guys are going to point fingers at themselves. And that’s ridiculous because we’ve all been there.
“Throughout the season we’ve all done some things incredibly well, but when it’s the biggest stage like this and we don’t have our cleanest game, it makes it all seem worse. Look, we were down 3-0, and we still gave ourselves a chance. Braylon did his job pitching around that, and we had our opportunities to chip away at the deficit.”
It’s baseball, and people always forget an effort like Cordonnier’s where he kept his wits to pitch five scoreless and give his team that chance. It’s hard to do, as the old-timers say…keep your dauber up.
And baseball’s unforgiving, whether it’s walks, errors, rundown plays, or striking out. Do it against a team like Minster, on one of its better days, and on that biggest stage, and your margin for error just isn’t that great.
“And their confidence was incredible,” added Phlipot, speaking of Minster. “They were having some comfortable at-bats, and we…not so much.
“We looked terrible at times, but then some guys started turning around some pitches, we worked a few walks in there, and we had some better swings.
“But Magoto was incredible today. Give him his due.”
Braylon Cordonnier is so respected as a hitter that he simply doesn’t get many fastballs over the course of the year, or fastball strikes, at which to swing.
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But in the seventh, with one out, he gave his supporters a moment, along with those who wonder how a kid from a place as small as Russia (Roo-shee) could attract the attention of a Division I program from the Sun Belt Conference. Magoto gave him that fastball on the inside half of the plate…and Cordonnier crushed it to the deepest part of Canal Park, into a gathering wind, short-hopping the wall at the 400 foot mark.
“That felt pretty good,” he said. ” I didn’t know how far, but I crushed it.”
There are no moral victories, especially in the last game of the season on the biggest stage…but it was a moment of optimism that everyone understood, nonetheless.
Sometimes, even when you don’t win, something happens that keeps you coming back for more. Call it…the way you finish even if you don’t win. Braylon Cordonnier is going to play a lot more baseball, have better days, and better memories than that play in the first and four errors on the biggest stage.
It doesn’t diminish a title in baseball and four trips to the Final Four.
It doesn’t diminish what, as a group, they accomplished together outside of baseball.
And there’s always things you can do better. To err is human. Hence…a note to self.
Between now and next baseball season………!
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