NORTH RIDGEVILLE — In a reverse of Murphy’s Law, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, on Wednesday everything that could go right for Matt Murphy and his North Ridgeville teammates did go right.
Murphy’s Rangers outhit, outpitched and played better defense than Vermilion in rolling to a 10-1 win in a battle of West Shore Conference contenders on a sunny but windy day.
North Ridgeville (5-5, 4-1) slammed 16 hits — Chris Newton and Joe Humphrey led the way with three each — and got a three-hit pitching gem by Murphy in routing the Sailors (6-4, 3-2). Even defensively, though the Rangers did commit two errors, they were sharp, turning in a number of outstanding fielding plays, especially on throws by third baseman Humphrey.
After leading 1-0, North Ridgeville broke the game open with a five-run third inning, sparked by doubles by Sean Harnish, Devon White and Joe Rodriguez. In the fifth, the Rangers tacked on three more on a double by Murphy and singles by Alex Rios, Newton, Humphrey and Matt McGinty after a leadoff walk.
“They hit the ball pretty well,” Vermilion coach Jeff Kech. “And they hit a pretty good pitcher (Adam Beach) hard today. I’ve got to give them credit. Today they were the better team. On the positive side, I thought Anthony Labondono and Jon Hawkins pitched very well at times in relief.”
“Vermilion has a great team,” North Ridgeville coach Mike McMillan said. “I give a lot of the credit for this win to the papers for ranking Vermilion so high and not giving us much credit. Our kids were really up for this one. We want to play our game and we did it today. We’re on a quest to win the conference title and I honestly believe this could be our year.  I have good hitting and five great pitchers this year. We’re stacked with pitching. It’s exciting to be a coach this year in our conference with a lot of great teams.”
Vermilion’s lone run came in the third on a walk and double to left-center by Beach. It could have been more but Beach was out trying to stretch the hit to a triple.
Contact Jerry Rombach at 329-7137 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.       

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