After two failed comebacks this weekend against Northern Illinois, the Falcons finally found a way to win yesterday.
It took a disputed call on David Barkholz’s top of the ninth catch to get Barkholz fired up. With the Falcons leading 10-7, the centerfielder backed up to the fence to make a catch, bobbling the ball before gaining control. The second base umpire ruled no catch on the play, saying the ball hit against the fence. The Huskies went on to tie the game with two home runs off of Neil Schmitz.
“It was a heck of a play by David, quite a juggling act,” BG coach Danny Schmitz said. “We know what he’s going to go into when he’s done playing baseball. I thought it was a good catch.”
Barkholz got his chance in the bottom of the ninth and capitalized, leading off with a walk-off homer, his first home run of the season.
“I caught that ball, and I was mad because it was one of the best catches,” Barkholz said. “It was pretty frustrating, but it was important to get back up to the plate and not take that with me because it was still a tie game, and we knew we had to get this game. It was important to try and get on base and that was all I was trying to do was get a base hit, and I happened to get one up in that wind.”
Barkholz’s homer capped off a game where Bowling Green battled back from a 7-3 deficit in the seventh inning, scoring two runs in that frame when Nolan Reimold hit his eighth homer of the season. Andy Hudak doubled to left, and two batters later, Jimmy Lipari got the RBI with a base hit.
Then in the eighth, the Falcons got five runs with Barkholz’s double, Eric Lawson’s RBI single, Reimold’s two-run double, Hudak’s second double of the game and Lipari’s two-run single.
“Every team seems to be giving everyone a battle so the last three games were really hard-fought,” Barkholz said. “We can come from behind; we showed that this whole weekend. We came from behind every single game so we know we’re there in the ball game, and we feel good about it.”
The comeback win came at a good time for the Falcons, as they were about to fall two games below .500 in the Mid-American Conference.
The Falcons came back to tie Friday’s game after being down 6-4 and came back from a 6-0 deficit in Saturday’s game, but Northern Illinois posted late comebacks in both games to get the wins. Northern’s comeback yesterday wasn’t enough.
“I’m proud of our guys because we battled back all three days, and we were finally able to get a ‘W,'” Schmitz said. “That’s what we talked about in the dugout — that we wanted to win it in the bottom of the inning and go home.”
