JULY 10, 2004
Another setback as slump continues for the Eagles
By STEPHEN DRAVIS - Special to The Post-Star

GLENS FALLS -- The best team in the New York Collegiate Baseball League is going through the worst stretch of its inaugural season, and its veteran coach is not all that surprised.

The Eagles' 19-3 run to the all-star break had some fans thinking Glens Falls was nearly unbeatable. On Friday night, the Eagles were beaten for the fourth straight game, this time 5-2 by Watertown, to slip to 21-9 on the season.

"That was unrealistic," Glens Falls coach John Mayotte said about the red-hot start. "You have to have more respect for the game of baseball than to think you're going to continue at that pace for the entire year."

On Friday at East Field, Ryan Fecteau paced the Wizards (11-16) to victory with eight strong innings that included 10 strikeouts. Watertown rallied with three runs in the top of the eighth to break a 2-2 tie and give Glens Falls its sixth loss in eight games.

Glens Falls starter Steven Calicutt pitched well through 7 1/3 innings, but he got off to a rough start in the eighth. With the score tied 2-2, a one-out walk and a bloop single to right sent Calicutt to the showers in favor of Randy Cornejo.

Cornejo could not close the door. Watertown's Shawn Hayes drew a walk, and Matt Enuco lined a single to right to drive in two runs and give the Wizards the lead for good.

"It's been a rough stretch, and this to me was a typical example of it," Mayotte said. "It was the same situation, the same strategy, the same personnel, but absolutely different results from what would have happened earlier in the season.

"If I had come in earlier in the year in the same situation and put Randy in, he would have done the job and gotten the outs, and we would have found a way to break the tie and go on to win the game. But we're getting different results right now."

So is Watertown, which started the year 2-10 but overcame a rash of early-season injuries -- some of which sent players home for the year -- to climb out of the NYCBL's East Division basement.

On Friday night, the Wizards took a 2-0 lead in the second inning. Enuco lifted a leadoff double to left field, and Jeff Vincent moved him over with a bunt single. Joe Lox's sacrifice scored Enuco, and Vincent eventually came home on Nicholas Wenger's single to center.

Glens Falls picked up a run in the bottom of the second thanks to Chris Carlson's double and Aaron Richard's RBI double. The Eagles tied the game in the sixth when Carlson drove in Terry Blunt with a single to right.

The Eagles did notch eight hits against Fecteau, but the right-hander from New Hampshire's St. Anselm College had command of umpire Kean Thomas' wide strike zone all night.

"Ryan's a very accurate guy," Watertown coach Todd Kirkey said. "I don't want to say he's overpowering, but he changes speeds, and you just don't know where he's coming from.

"Glens Falls can hit. I still think, regardless of their recent slump, they're the best-hitting team in the league. Ryan is the kind of pitcher who can keep guys off-balance. He has three, sometimes four pitches, and if he gets a little bit on the corners, he's going to be tough."

Fecteau ran out of steam in the ninth. After his pitch count got up around 100, and with the leadoff man aboard after a hit-by-pitch, Kirkey turned to reliever Bobby Wyant. Wyant improved to 7-for-7 in save situations by inducing a double play and catching the final Glens Falls batter looking at an 0-2 strike.

That made it six Golden Eagles to go down looking -- including all three men Fecteau faced in the third.

"I thought the kid pitched a heck of a game," Mayotte said. "That's a good pitcher. He's got a lot of stuff. ... It was a wide strike zone, and he took advantage of that. You do what you can within the rules.

"We took a lot of pitches and a lot of third strikes. That comes sometimes from having an erratic strike zone, but I'm not sure that was the case. ... But I think we need to be a little more aggressive than we were."