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Calvert Hall coach Lou Eckerl worried his team would suffer a letdown against visiting Mount St. Joseph Thursday afternoon after thumping defending Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference champion Archbishop Spalding two days earlier.
It just didn't happen.
Calvert Hall blanked the Gaels in Towson, 6-0, in a league game behind the pitching effort of senior Garrett Walther.
Walther, a 5-foot-11, 220-pound right-hander, allowed six hits and struck out seven batters across six innings.
"He held us in the game today," Eckerl said. "He had a low pitch count. He kept the ball in the strike zone and got real tough when they had people in scoring position."
It was like that way from the first inning on. Walther, who will pitch at Towson University next season, stranded leadoff batter Josh Beglan at third in the first after he reached the base with no outs.
The hurler caught Steve Hostutler in a run down, got Nick Payne to ground out and struck out Kirk Haynes.
The Cardinals (5-0 overall, 2-0 league) gave Hostutler all the support he needed in the third with a run.
Ron Farley led off with a single to left field, went to second on Robbie Jones infield hit, advanced to third on a wild pitch and scored on Alex Murphy's single.
In the fourth, Walther wigged out of another jam with runners at first and third and no one out. He coaxed Colin Targonski and Peter Solomon into consecutive ground outs before the inning ended on a base running error.
Calvert Hall pushed its lead to 4-0 in the fourth. A dropped fly ball by the center fielder led to with three unearned runs off of Mount St. Joseph right-hander Kirk Haynes, who gave up nine hits and three earned runs in six innings.
Paul Orlando smacked a run-scoring double off the left field fence to highlight the fourth while Garrett and Farley and had RBI sacrifice flies.
"We have a long ways to go," said Mount St. Joseph coach Dave Norton, whose team dropped to 3-3 overall and 0-2 in the league. "We made some poor judgments on plays. If we caught that fly ball, those three runs probably don't happen. We also ran ourselves out of some innings. We will correct all those things that are wrong."
