New Jersey City University Athletics

 

MAHWAH, NJ…In a battle of one of the top collegiate baseball families in the state of New Jersey, Ramapo College freshman second baseman Joey Cacchiola (Union, NJ/Union) and New Jersey City University junior rightfielder ANTHONY CACCHIOLA (Union, NJ/Union) were the top players for their respective schools, but the Roadrunners remained unbeaten in the New Jersey Athletic Conference, sneaking past NJCU, 4-3, in a league game on Thursday.

 

Ramapo improves to 18-4 overall and 5-0 in the NJAC, as the first-place Roadrunners survived at home against the Knights (10-10, 1-3 NJAC), who fall back to .500 overall.

 

In the first collegiate meeting between the Cacchiola brothers, ANTHONY CACCHIOLA was NJCU’s only player with multiple hits, finishing 2-for-4 with one run and his sixth steal of the year. Also for NJCU, junior third baseman RYAN PELT (Branchville, NJ/High Point Regional) had two RBIs.

 

Junior shortstop JOSE FULGENCIO (Bronx, NY/San Rafael, Dominican Republic) went 1-for-4 to extend his hitting streak to 10 straight, but junior first baseman RUBEN BORGES (Union, NJ/Union) saw his batting streak snapped at 11 games. Junior leftfielder ANTHONY MACKOW (Bayonne, NJ/Bayonne) was 1-for-4 with an RBI double and one run.

 

Joey Cacchiola was the star for Ramapo, finishing 3-for-5 with three RBIs, a homerun and one run. He also earned his fifth save of the season, throwing a perfect 1.1 innings of relief with one strikeout. Junior centerfielder Nick Sbarra (Washington Township, NJ/Washington Township) was 2-for-4 with two runs.

 

Sophomore right-hander Joe Abruzzo (Clark, NJ/Arthur L. Johnson) earned the win for Ramapo to improve to 4-0. He allowed three runs (one earned) and three hits with five strikeouts and five walks in 5.2 innings. Junior righty Tim Seiden (West Milford, NJ/West Milford) gave up just two hits with a strikeout in 2.0 innings of relief.

 

NJCU junior righty AHSON SHAHID (Harrison, NJ/Harrison) had an effective outing, allowing four runs and eight hits over 6.1 innings, with six walks and four strikeouts, but fell to 1-2. Junior left-hander GEORGE JESSEN (Rutherford, NJ/Rutherford) continued his stellar comeback in 2007, lowering his overall ERA to 1.54. He limited Ramapo to one hit and had a strikeout in 1.2 innings of relief. He had a 9.69 ERA last year.

 

Ramapo opened a 1-0 lea din the first on a Cacchiola single to score Sbarra who led off with an infield hit. The Roadrunners added a run in the third on a sacrifice fly, and moved in front 4-0 when Sbarra led off with a double and Cacchiola notched his second homer of the season—a two-run four-bagger to leftfield—and the eventual winning runs.

 

NJCU battled back with three runs in the fifth inning, to close the gap to 4-3. Cacchiola singled and scored on an RBI double by Mackow, before Pelt sent a shot to shortstop that ended in an error, but brought home two runs.

 

NJCU stranded runners on second and third in the fifth inning and first and second in the eighth, with chances to score. Ramapo left 13 on overall, including the bases loaded in the first and fifth.

 

NJCU returns to action on Friday, April 6 at 3:30 p.m. when it hosts Montclair State University in an NJAC game at the Thomas M. Gerrity Athletic Complex.