ALTOONA -- The PIAA doesn't let teams take infield practice before baseball championship games at Blair County Ballpark.

But the Canon-McMillan Big Macs took batting practice yesterday -- during the game.

At least that's how it seemed as Canon-McMillan took turns knocking around two Spring-Ford pitchers.

All that was missing was a bucket of balls at the pitchers' mound. When the Big Macs stopped going batty, they had a 10-2 victory in the Class AAAA title game, and the first PIAA baseball championship in school history.

The game was delayed an hour-and-a-half in the third inning because of a thunderstorm. Some of the lightning came off Canon-McMillan's bats, as the Big Macs finished with 14 hits.

To put their offensive onslaught in perspective, consider this: Since the PIAA championships started in 1977, forty-four teams from the WPIAL had made it to a title game before Canon-McMillan. The only one to score more runs was Washington, which scored 13 in 1998.

"The last few days, we really worked a lot on hitting the ball the other way," said Canon-McMillan coach Steve Bucci.

But the Big Macs hit every which way against Spring-Ford (19-10), a suburban Philadelphia team whose starting pitcher, Jason Ferrie, came in with 125 strikeouts in 94¹/₃ innings. He lasted only 1²/₃ innings.

"We sort of got in the groove and got hot at the right time of the year," said Big Macs sophomore center fielder Mike Hull.

In four PIAA playoff games, Canon-McMillan (22-5) scored 40 runs, including 14 in the semifinals against Central Mountain.

Against Spring-Ford, Hull was 3 for 4 with two doubles and two RBIs. Senior Chris Douglas had two triples, was 3 for 4 and also was the winning pitcher, working the final four innings after relieving Chris Dittmar.

"It couldn't be any better than this," said Douglas. "[Ferrie] is still a pretty good pitcher. But no matter who they threw, we felt good."

Matt Pierpont, Charles Murphy and Phil Staab also had two hits. The first five hitters in Canon-McMillan's lineup had 10 hits.

"Jumping on them early was big," Bucci said.

Canon-McMillan scored three runs in the first and four in the second to take a 7-0 lead.

Dittmar gave up only one hit in the first three innings before the storm hit. When the game resumed, Bucci stuck with Dittmar, but after giving up leadoff singles in the fourth, Bucci pulled Dittmar for Douglas, who gave up only three hits in the final four innings.

After the game, Canon-McMillan athletic director Guy Montecalvo handed out the gold medals to the Big Macs.

His son, Jim, 26, died of an illness last Saturday, and Canon-McMillan's players wore his initials on their hats.

On the other hand, Bucci's wife, Shannon, is due to give birth to the couple's first child any day.

"What a week," Bucci said.Inside

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