Extra-inning thriller: Luke Hogue walks it off, Gardens baseball stuns Park Vista
Palm Beach Gardens baseball completed a thrilling comeback Tuesday facing Park Vista’s Ethan Mattison, arguably the county’s top pitcher.
The Gators entered the seventh inning staring down the wrong end of a perfect game before everything went haywire.
On the back of four errors and a dream, the Gators plated four runs in the final frame to force extra innings before Luke Hogue — Gardens’ starting pitcher in the duel — dug low and deep to muscle a pitch over the left-field fence for a walk-off 6-4 win.
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“Just going up, I wanted to do a job and put the ball in play,” Hogue said. “Keep the bats rolling. Toward those last couple of innings, we were fighting, hitting the ball well. I just wanted to put it in play. I got a good pitch low and just tried to golf it out and it worked out well.”
The golfing analogy is not an understatement — Hogue exchanged his bat for a 2-iron as he reached below his knees to send the ball airborne.
In a major league-size field, no one in the park was sure it was going to go all the way.
Hogue himself wasn’t certain until he saw his first base coach’s reaction on his turn.
“I put my head down and started running,” Hogue said. “Then I was at first and my first base coach Gavin started going ballistic, and I said, ‘Well, I guess it’s out.’”
Not by much, but just enough.
“We wanted this game so bad,” Hogue said. “Coming into this year not having a good year last year, different mentality. No matter how much we’re down by. I love the team’s fight. It was amazing all around.”
It was the climax to a game where everything that had gone wrong for the Gators was suddenly going right.
Before Hogue’s homer, the Gators' infield executed a sublime double play, with Miguel Marrero receiving the throw from Ian Vertucci on a bunt, throwing a frozen rope to first base for two outs.
“You couldn’t really draw that one up better,” Gardens head coach Matthew Judkins said. “To get two right there ... it’s like, let’s play the lotto tonight because we’ve got something working.”
It’s been a Gators renaissance this year, and for Hogue himself, who’s finally seeing his labor bearing fruit.
“The kid works his absolute tail off,” Judkins said. “He’s one of the hardest-working players I’ve ever coached, if not the hardest working. You root for kids like that. That thing grew some wings and it got out of here,” he continued, referencing the home run.
“I think the baseball gods were kind of looking over us tonight, awarding him for his hard work.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Gardens baseball wins in extras on Luke Hogue's walk-off homer
