All the turns had to eventually meet an end. The five home runs — four for Harwich and one for the Anglers — had to churn out a tangible result. The wild pitches, which together could have filled the first base dugout of dirtied baseballs, were bound to push one sloppy performance ahead of the other. 

Hyperboles aside, Harwich (22-14-2) played just slightly better than Chatham (16-21-1) at Whitehouse Field on Saturday night and has a 9-8 win — thanks to a walk-off single by Skye Bolt in the bottom of the 10th — to show for it. The Anglers are still winless against the Mariners this season, and again came within outs of changing that. 

Chris Shaw (Boston College) hit a go-ahead three-run homer in the ninth in the eventual Anglers loss. 

Box Score:

Game Tracker

“What are you going to do, we’re snake bit and we got some issues,” Chatham manager John Schiffner said. “It’s just not our place and not our team. We just don’t play well against them, and we almost played well against them.”

Before the game’s drama steered it into extra innings, Harwich built a seemingly sustainable lead with a bevy of home runs. C.J. Hinojosa hit a two-run jack in the first, Ian happ a solo shot in the third, and Hinojosa — his second of the contest and third of the season — a solo homer of his own in the fifth. And when Cavan Biggio, the unlikeliest of power hitters, took one over the right-field wall in the bottom of the sixth, Chatham’s fate appeared sealed. 

Jeff Burke (Boston College), Bryan Goossens (Siena) and Charlie Dant (Dayton) allowed Harwich a 6-2 lead and formalities were supposed to follow. But the Anglers, like Schiffner has said so many times this season, had too much fight to go down. They used a wild pitch and an RBI groundout by Robert Baldwin (Yale) to draw closer in the top of the eight, setting up a nearly decisive ninth. 

“I was looking to drive something to left-center,” said Chris Shaw (Boston College) of an at-bat that led to a go ahead, three-run blast. “Then he gave me a back-door slider that I saw really well so I was actually sitting on that. And he came with a changeup that just kind of hung up there too long and I was able to stay through it.”

Shaw’s home run smacked into the scoreboard overlooking right field and willed it to tilt in Chatham’s favor. It did, rather ceremoniously, but the lead was short lived. 

Two wild pitches in the bottom half made the game just that: wild. The Mariners tied the game with two runs and just one hit, as a whole staff effort couldn’t quite stave off the hosts. Zac Gallen (North Carolina) eventually worked out of the inning on a line out to second — which momentarily looked like a walk-off hit for Kyle Barrett — but Harwich’s crusade wasn’t over. Bolt’s walk-off single was the punctuation mark on a game begging for one, and had multiple implications for the visitors. 

With Brewster beating Yarmouth-Dennis 13-3 earlier in the night, the Whitecaps stayed within striking distance of the division’s fourth and final playoff spot. A win would have dampened the playoff race, but the loss thickened it. 

Said Ty Moore (UCLA): “We just need to get it together. Tonight was a tough one but we just need to keep plugging.”

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