Julio Ermigiotti’s greatest performance couldn’t have come at a better time.
The Central Bucks West senior threw a perfect game to propel the Bucks to a 3-0 win over Wilson in Monday’s opening round of the PIAA Class 6A tournament at Villanova Ballpark at Plymouth Meeting.
Ermigiotti threw just 80 pitches, 59 of which were strikes, to the minimum 21 batters, striking out nine. While he typically throws a lot of breaking pitches, on this occasion the fastball was his bread and butter.
“I knew through the game, ‘OK, I’m just going to stick with the fastball,” Ermigiotti said. “Prior to this, I was like, ‘All right, I’m going to have to work heavy fastball, slider, maybe even mix in the changeup,’ but it was working well for me, so I’m like, just keep throwing it, and good things happen. I noticed hitters were late on the fastball, and that was the ticket through the game most of the way.
“I’d been thinking it would be cool to throw a no-hitter in my last high school season. I’ve been thinking about it lately, but I’m never mad if something like this doesn’t happen. I just want to get through the game and get our team a win.”
It is the first perfect game of his career.
“It was like everything I worked for came together in one moment,” he said.
CB West senior catcher Max McGlone was thrilled to be the battery mate.
“You always know when he’s pitching, he’s going to come out and throw strikes and do a great job,” McGlone said. “But I was not expecting that in the first round of state playoffs.Our offense put a couple of runs up for him and made the plays behind him.
“Usually, his slider is his best pitch,” he said. “That’s his out pitch. Today, I relied on his fastball. First time through the lineup, I realized that’s what was getting outs, so I was just going to stick with that, although that wasn’t really our game plan. Our game plan was to do what we usually do with him, but you’ve got to change things up on the fly. He did a great job with it.”
CB West scored all of its runs in the fourth inning. Alex Valdes and Quinn Illig reached on consecutive singles and Matt Carr beat out a bunt to load the bases.
Jack Hogenauer grounded out to score Valdes and Kevin Bukowski singled to score Illig and Carr for a pair of insurance runs.
“Every time as a pitcher when you get those comfort runs and that room to work with, it’s always relaxing,” Ermigiotti said. “I knew my guys at some point were going to put up some runs for me with the way we’ve been playing, so it was awesome. A deep sigh of relief there when the inning happened.”
Bukowski, a senior, was happy to oblige.
“Getting the hit was nice, but we didn’t even need it,” Bukowski said. “All we needed was one because he (Ermigiotti) did his thing today.”
“It’s amazing. He did a fantastic job. It was the best performance I’ve ever seen in my life. It was a pleasure just watching him out there (shortstop). It was very impressive.
“We realized around the fifth inning (that Ermigiotti had a perfect game going). Then the dugout starts to get a little quiet. Everyone doesn’t want to say anything.
“Going into the seventh, I knew it. I was out there, a little more nervous than usual because you don’t want to be ‘that guy.’ He did outstanding.”
The Bucks (20-6) will play District 12 titlist Father Judge (15-1) on Thursday in the quarterfinals at Villanova Ballpark at 4 p.m. Father Judge eliminated District One fourth seed Plymouth Whitemarsh, 6-2, in another opening-round game. Wilson, the District Three runner-up, ends the season 17-8.
CB West entered the state tournament as the District One champion, winning the title with a 4-0 victory over top-seeded Spring-Ford on Thursday, also at Villanova Ballpark.
Sam Greer was on the mound for CB West against the Rams and the junior right-hander pitched a gem, going six innings with one hit, four strikeouts and two walks.
The hit, a leadoff single by David Rickman at the top of the sixth, ended his no-hit bid.
“I wasn’t concerned about that,” Greer said. “I was just so hyped. It’s our first district championship win, and I was just grateful for the opportunity to be able to get here. It was amazing.”
“I was just throwing strikes. They couldn’t touch my fastball, so I just kept pounding it in different spots, and it worked. “We’ve never played them before, so we didn’t know what to expect, but we were really confident in what we do and the game we play, so we knew we had a good chance to beat them.
“I’m just trying to keep the runs low, so my team can do the damage with the bats.”
Alex Jenkinson came on in relief of Greer, surrendering one hit but not allowing a run.
“It’s a total team effort,” said Jenkinson, a senior. “Everyone plays a part and I just hope to do mine. Sam had an unbelievable performance and we scored some runs so that took a lot of the pressure off. Our defense made the plays and we really executed well.
“At the beginning of the season I wouldn’t have guessed that we’d be here but once we started playing it seemed more achievable every day.”
The Bucks got out of the gate quickly, scoring a run on McGlone’s RBI single to score Bill Zentmayer. Valdes and Illig led off the second with back-to-back singles. Carr sacrifice bunted to move them up, and Valdes scored on a Jack Hogenauer sacrifice fly.
Zentmayer was hit by a pitch to start the third inning and scored when Greer doubled. Zentmayer doubled in the fifth inning and came home when McGlone singled.
“We all just treated it like it was a normal game,” McGlone said. “We weren’t worried. We were very confident.”
After squeaking past Downingtown West, 7-6, in eight innings in the opening round of district play, the 14th seeded Bucks went on to knock out third seed Methacton, 10-0, then defeated sixth seed Coatesville, 6-1, in the quarterfinals, and second seed North Penn, 14-1, in the semifinals to reach the title game.
“We had a rough first game (of the tournament) but once we got past that, our confidence was through the roof,” McGlone said. “No one was going to stop us. We were playing for each other and we were playing for a good friend of ours, Dom Testani, who died in March.”
Testani, who graduated from CB West in January, drowned in a boating accident in the Poconos.
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