Even in a season filled with high-scoring marathons and late-inning rallies, this one broke new ground.

Ahead by 11 runs with five outs to go, the Muhlenberg baseball team needed extra innings to defeat Gettysburg, 17-15, in the second game of a Centennial Conference doubleheader. The Bullets won the first game, 6-5.

Difficult to pin down as it was, the win was an important one for the Mules (15-12, 8-4), who remained tied for third place in the CC with Ursinus, which split with Washington. Dickinson, the next opponent for Muhlenberg, picked up ground by sweeping Swarthmore to improve to 6-3-1 in the league.

After Gettysburg (12-19, 4-8) scored four in the eighth and seven in the ninth to tie the game at 15, sophomore Daniel Asip led off the top of the 10th with a triple to right-center. Junior Matthew Block followed with a sacrifice fly to deep left for his third RBI of the game.

One out later, freshman Eric Hammond walked and came around to score on back-to-back singles by classmates Jason Rattino and Edward Risener. Rattino’s hit was the first of his career.

The Bullets put two men on base in the bottom of the 10th, but Hammond hauled in a fly ball to center to end the game – the Mules’ fifth this year in which both teams scored in double digts.

Gettysburg’s stunning comeback deprived junior Tom McDonald of his fourth win of the season. McDonald pitched a solid seven innings, allowing 10 singles and only one earned run.

Muhlenberg built its big lead by scoring in six of the first eight innings. Freshman John Kalis had three extra-base hits, two doubles and a triple, and Hammond and junior Mike Hart contributed three hits apiece.

In the opener, it was the Mules who almost pulled off a dramatic comeback. They tied the score at 3-3 with two in the top of the sixth, only to have the Bullets score three in the bottom of the inning. An RBI single by senior Matt Tobia, his third hit of the game, and a sacrifice fly by Kalis brought Muhlenberg to within one with two out in the top of the seventh. Hart doubled to put runners on second and third, but the game ended on a fly to right.

Muhlenberg’s last five games have been decided by a total of seven runs.

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Just three weeks before the Centennial Conference Championships, the Mules had an incredible meet, with a total of 13 ECACs qualifiers, two NCAA provisional qualifiers, two school records, 31 performances that would have made last week’s CC top-10 list and 20 performances that

Sophomore Sara Gearin qualified for ECACs in the 5,000 for the second week in a row, improving her time by more than 16 seconds.

made Muhlenberg’s all-time top-10 list.

Mount was responsible for both NCAA qualifiers and school records, breaking her own marks in the 800 and the 1,500. In the latter distance, Mount had already qualified for the NCAAs, but lowered her time from 4:36.49 (which was the fifth-best in Division III entering the meet) to 4:35.18 and moved closer to the automatic qualifying standard of 4:34.00.

Mount’s 800 time of 2:15.57 eclipsed the provisional standard of 2:15.80 and broke the school record of 2:16.22 she set earlier this year.

All three of Mercado’s ECAC-qualifying times landed him second on Muhlenberg’s all-time performance lists. He missed the school record in the 400 by 32 hundredths of a second.

Junior Jacquelyn Inverso also qualified for ECACs in multiple events, individually in the long jump and as part of the 4x100-meter relay team.

Junior Matthew Sallese jumped into the top five on the performance list with an ECAC-qualifying shot put of 46-11¾.

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