DOVER, Del. (April 20, 2024) – A team does not get through a baseball season without facing some adversity; there are simply too many games for the entire year to go well. The Sacred Heart University faced some early troubles when it opened the campaign 1-8 in non-conference play. Now, the Pioneers have their first bonafide Northeast Conference struggle on their hands. SHU took a 5-2 lead in the seventh on the road on Saturday afternoon, but surrendered six in the last of the ninth, capped by a walk-off grand slam from Delaware State's biggest bat, Chris Amparo, as the Hornets rallied for an 8-5 victory.
SHU (18-18, 14-6 NEC) has now lost four straight and, more importantly, has dropped its first NEC series of the year and slipped out of first place, a game behind LIU. The Pios have been walked off Bob Reed Field on back-to-back days and will look to salvage the series finale on Sunday at 1 p.m. Delaware State (14-17, 13-7 NEC) has won seven in a row.
Sacred Heart trailed 2-0 through five, but scored twice in the sixth to tie things up. The Pios were poised to force a split of the weekend's first two games after they immediately untied things with three more in the seventh. A
Dennis Gamester (West Haven, Conn.) single and a walk to
Alex Ungar (Ronkonkoma, N.Y.) set the table and then
Dante D'Amore (Southington, Conn.) cleared it off. The junior first baseman cracked a three-run home run to left field. It was his second dinger in as many days and his fourth of the season.
Switch pitcher
PJ Rogan (Wildwood, Mo.) stranded a pair in the bottom of the seventh, and got Delaware State in order in the eighth, but ran into trouble in the ninth. He walked the first two batters of the frame and surrendered a single to Wilfredo Mendez to load the bases, before giving way to right-hander
Charlie Costello (Hopewell Junction, N.Y.).
Typically SHU's fireman out of the bullpen, Costello (3-2) had his second rough outing of the week and could not put out the flames. He hit Jancarlos Colon with the first pitch he threw to force in a run to cut the lead to 5-3, and then surrendered an RBI single to Evan Bouldin to make it 5-4. Costello nearly pulled a Houdini act, as he got Jaryn Sample to bounce to third base for a force out at the plate and then fanned Krew Bouldin on just three pitches for the second out.
That brought the game to its crescendo. Amparo, one of the NEC's leading bats and DSU's biggest threat, came to the plate in the cliché back yard baseball situation: bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth, home team trailing by a run. Costello fell behind 2-0 and then threw one which caught too much of the plate. Amparo hammered his team-leading 10
th home run of the season to left field and admired it walking down the first-base line while the Hornet dugout spilling onto the field in celebration.
For one of baseball's rarest occurrences, Sacred Heart has now lost via walk-off grand slam twice in less than a year. On May 18 of last season, the Pios led Merrimack 3-1 heading to the ninth, before the Warriors' Scott Elliott provided some late theatrics.
Amparo's blast made a winner out of right-hander Michael Lane (2-2), even though he had surrendered the three-run bomb to D'Amore in the seventh. Lane recovered from there, as he struck out the side following a leadoff walk in the eighth and then induced three straight groundouts in the top of the ninth.
