FSU Baseball Walks-Off with Season Series vs. UF

On some nights, FSU baseball cobbles together runs. Bunts. Steals. Small ball. Tonight was not one of those nights. Mike Martin described Florida State approaching this one with an angry attitude. He said when he walked around batting practice today, he could look at his team and tell that “they weren’t happy.” There are four abused baseballs that can attest to that anger.

That’s because the ‘Noles used four solo home runs, four massive, no-doubt, towering drives into the ether to pull out their first ever extra-inning win over the Florida Gators on Tuesday night by a score of 4-3.

Everything was going right for the Gators. Winners of their last four, by a combined score of 60-12, UF arrived in Tallahassee with a No. 7 ranking and the right kind of momentum. The Seminoles’ anger was justified as they looked headed in the other direction, having dropped four straight and sliding to No. 13 after getting swept at Notre Dame. With the teams splitting their first two meetings, the season series was to be decided. And all signs pointed to Florida.

Neither team could pull away by more than a run in this one, but it’s not that both squads didn’t have their opportunities. Outside of Busby, who was essentially in scoring position in the batter’s box tonight, the Seminoles especially lacked the clutch gene for most of the night, finishing 0-10 with RISP. The Gators also had ten men on second or third tonight, but they got a hit in two of those situations. Twice the ‘Noles had a runner on third with less than two outs, and on neither occasion were they able to bring him across.

Busby’s first shot initiated the scoring in the bottom of the second and came in the form of an absolute moon ball that rode an assisting wind over the left-centerfield wall. The Gators answered quickly, getting a pair of two-out runs when Harrison Bader came through with an RBI double in the second that was followed by a Peter Alonso single off FSU starter Bryant Holtmann to make it 2-1, UF.

The ‘Noles wasted a bases-loaded, one-out situation in the third before Busby’s second dinger of the night, this one more to left-field proper, tied it at two in the fourth. Florida’s JJ Schwarz went deep in the sixth to give UF a 3-2 lead, but Florida State’s Chris Marconcini absolutely tattooed one that soared over the right-field fence and onto the FSU Circus, tying things up at three in the Seminole eighth.

It looked like the Gators were primed to recapture the lead in the top of the ninth, after Schwarz led off with a double to center off closer Billy Strode. But Strode buckled down, getting a popped-up bunt, a great play by Busby on a chopper (he had an impressive game in the field tonight as well, contributing nine assists), and a strikeout that brought the eighth-largest crowd in Dick Howser Stadium history (6,634) to its feet.

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Those who sat down didn’t remain seated long, as John Sansone stroked one to center that came mere feet from ending this one in the home ninth. But it came up just short, and FSU went to extra innings for the first time this year.

The score stayed knotted at three past the four-hour mark, and Strode stayed in there for the ‘Noles, throwing 69 pitches over 4.0 innings of work. Strode could tell he was about done. Martin said that, in the 11th, the lefty senior approached him and said, right to his face, “I’m okay.” He was, even escaping a two-out, bases-loaded jam in the 12th.

Quincy Nieporte made sure there wasn’t a 13th. Leading off the bottom half of the 12th, Nieporte clobbered a fastball over the left-field wall to send the Howser crowd home happy– and maybe take a little edge off the FSU clubhouse. He confirmed Martin’s comment about this team being upset, saying of his walk-off dinger: “There was a lot of anger in that one.” But, as you might expect, Nieporte’s confession of wrath was made with a smile on his face.

The Seminoles will remain at home, as they’ll host the Pittsburgh Panthers for a weekend series beginning Friday at 6 pm.

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