A cold day at Cust

So, I was wondering what game to cover Tuesday afternoon. Really, there was only one -- Bridgewater-Raritan-Immaculata at the Cust Baseball Academy hard off Route 31. Everybody else is still off because of the Nor'Easter that has crippled several towns in the region. The fields are a mess.

But at Cust, there would be no rain out. Frost, wind and temperatures that made me feel as if it were mid-January, but no rain. I did see a snow squall at one point.

The wind was howling and the temperatures dropped throughout the interesting, but not exactly crisp game won by Immaculata 12-10.

Did I say it was cold?

Some thoughts:

If Bridgewater-Raritan shows the kind of resilence it did in sticking around Tuesday, the Panthers are going to win some games. But the Panthers have to cut down on the errors. They had five Tuesday.

Try, try again: Immaculata senior lefty Jack Rice struggled on the mound, but got through it with six grind-it-out innings. And he also struck out three times before belting a three-run homer in the sixth when the Spartans took a 12-7 lead.

The Spartans had three Division I-bound players in their lineup. Senior catcher Jeff Bland (U.S. Naval Academy), senior left-fielder Frank Florio (Stetson University, Fla.) and junior center fielder Matt Marquis (Vanderbilt).

Bridgewater-Raritan senior center fielder Ryan Zulpa was 3-for-3 and had a walk. He had two run scored, an RBI single and stolen base in the second. He also worked a walk in the seventh. He scored the game's last run.