On This Date Presented by Belmont Realty
 
With the 2020 spring sports season canceled by the COVID-19 outbreak, we at Fordham have decided to dig back through our archives and provide our fans with content on some of the outstanding teams and student-athletes who have graced Rose Hill over the years.
 
Boyertown/Philadelphia, Pa. – May 6, 1998 started out with a trip to Boyertown, Pa., for the Fordham baseball Rams. Almost a week later, on May 12, it ended in Philadelphia with the squad's first Atlantic 10 Championship.
 
Head coach Dan Gallagher's Rams, who went 10-8 in conference play to secure the second seed in the East Division, headed to Boyertown on Wednesday, May 6, in anticipation of their second straight appearance at the Atlantic 10 Championship, a four-team, double-elimination tournament to be held at Bear Stadium. But Mother Nature had a different idea.
 
The rains started on Thursday, May 7, the first scheduled day of the championship, and continued to Sunday, May 10, when officials sent the teams home to await word on the next step.
 
A call from the Atlantic 10 office on Monday instructed Fordham to travel to Philadelphia on Tuesday, May 12, for a one-day, three-game championship series to be played at Veterans Stadium.
 

The Rams would face George Washington, the top seed from the West Division, in the second game which was slated for a 3:00 p.m. start. UMass, the one-seed from the East, would play Virginia Tech, the two-seed from the West, in the first game, at Noon.
 
Mother Nature again stepped in as a steady rain delayed the start of the first game (the Veteran Stadium grounds crew would not remove the tarps from the dirt areas of the infield until it stopped raining). As a result, the first game did get started until almost 4:00 p.m.
 
After Virginia Tech upset UMass in the first game the Rams took the field for game two at about 7:00 p.m. With the score tied at one in the top of the fifth, Fordham plated four runs to take the lead for good. The big hit was a bases loaded triple from Bob Sprague which cleared the bases.

"It was a pretty quiet at the time," said Sprague. "GW was ready to look past their first round match up but we had other plans. The triple helped us jump out to our first lead and we never looked back. I remember lining that high fastball over the second basemen's head which kept rolling and rolling into the large alley of Veterans Stadium.  When I landed on third, the Ram side of the stadium erupted with cheers, shouts and expletives from the bench jockeys.  We were in their heads and took the air right out of the GW balloon.  From that point on it was ours to lose."
 
The Rams would take a commanding 9-3 lead with four more runs in the sixth and went on for a 14-5 win. Colin Young got the win on the mound, throwing six inning of six-hit ball, striking out seven, to improve to 5-0 on the year.
 
The championship game got underway after 10:00 p.m. and, unlike Fordham's first game, was a pitcher's duel. The Rams trailed 1-0 in the top of the eighth but that quickly changed as Fordham's first hitter in the inning, Tony Martelli, took the Hokie pitcher over the left field wall to knot the game at one.
 

Fordham hurler Gary Reznik, who allowed just four hits in seven innings of work, walked the first batter he faced in the bottom of the frame before giving way to reliever Kris Kozlowski who allowed no other base runners in the frame.

" The VET was so empty everything echoed," said SPrague. "I remember Reznik the "Bulldog" went deep into the final game and our bullpen pitchers (Kozlowski, Montano etc.) began getting warm in the in case he needed relief.  I was playing left field that game and distinctly remember their warm up pitches sounding like firecrackers….M-80's!  We could all smell victory and the adrenaline rush they had at the moment put a little extra something on their fastballs.  "Boom…Boom….Boom!!"
 
Sprague led off the ninth for the Rams reaching second on an error, and moved to third when Anthony Vega struck out but reached first on a wild pitch. Vince Lumia broke the tie with a single to right center with Vega moving to third where he would score an insurance run on a Mike D'Auria single.
 
Kozlowski, who had also pitched the final three innings of game one, came out strong in the bottom of the ninth, fanning the first two Virginia Tech batters before inducing the third to pop up to second. When the ball landed in D'Auria's glove it was the end of a long day that started at 9:00 a.m. in the Bronx and finished after 1:00 a.m. in Philadelphia with Fordham's first A-10 baseball title.
 
Following the championship, Stein, who went 5-for-10 in the two games, was named the championship's Most Outstanding Player, while he was joined on the All-Championship team by Reznik, Sprague, and Vega.
 
"I remember that day so well," said starting first baseman James Cisco, now head baseball coach at Lehman College. "It rained for five days prior and the championship was moved to Veteran's Stadium, a stadium which was pretty much all turf, and the old hard turf which felt like concrete. We were underdogs. No one gave us much of a chance that day but no one on our team believed it. We had a quiet confidence and GREAT senior leadership. Once that last out was recorded against Virginia Tech I overheard assistant coach Tony Mellaci tell assistant coach Nick Restaino "WE JUST MADE HISTORY". I'll never forget that! The game ended around one in the morning and my baseball career was forever changed after that amazing day."

"I'll never forget when it was all over I looked up in the stands and saw the Fordham Faithful, all 12 of them still standing in the stands like drowned rats from the rain," said Sprague. "All of the parents stuck it out for days waiting and they got the best outcome. My father was the first person I picked up in the crowd as I charged towards the mound to jump on the victory pile.  His marron hat with the big white block "F" stood out and I will never forget him fist pumping with pleasure. He drove two hours home on the NJ Turnpike by himself with the biggest smile on his face.  He said it was the easiest two hour ride home at 1 o'clock in the morning ever."
 
When the Rams boarded the bus for the trip back to the Bronx, Gallagher had the bus driver stop the bus so he could send a message to the squad. Holding up his hand, with a big ring on it, he reminded his troops that the season was not over.
 
"You haven't earned one of these yet," said Gallagher who was referring to the fact that the Rams had to win a play-in series to reach the NCAAs (the Atlantic 10 did not have an automatic NCAA bid in 1998).

When the bus pulled up in front of the Rose Hil Gym at sometime before 4 a.m., there was one last thing for the Rams to do. Ring the Victory Bell!
 
That play-in series was slated to start in less than 36 hours as Fordham would host Howard for a three-game series starting with a doubleheader on Thursday. The Rams won the doubleheader, 15-5 and 7-4, to earn the school's fifth NCAA bid, the third since 1990.
 
In the NCAA Regionals at Clemson, the Rams jumped out to a 4-0 lead on USC, who would go on to the win the national title, before falling to the Trojans, 10-6, and then fell to The Citadel, 5-1.