Notre Dame Cristo Rey high school baseball pitcher goes the distance in 82-0 loss

A high school game ended with an 82-0 score, and the losing pitcher inexplicably pitched the entire game. Initially, I thought Old Rochester was pilling on the embarrassment of Notre Dame Cristo Rey.

When I saw the headline that a high school team, Old Rochester, won a baseball game 82-0 against Notre Dame Cristo Rey, was ready to rant and rave about poor sportsmanship and terrible coaching and wondered how someone could let this happen? Surely the coach should be suspended; the players chastised for running up the score, the league mocked for not having a mercy rule.

Then I took a deep breath and read about the game. Yes, Old Rochester beat Notre Dame Cristo Rey by a score of 82-0. That’s a ridiculous score for a baseball game. Old Rochester led 32-0 after two innings. It was probably safe to say at that point that the game was well in hand. Why score another 50 runs?

According to coach Steve Carvalho of Old Rochester, his team tried not to run up the score:

"“We really tried everything possible. We told the kids don’t take extra bases, no sprinting – we even had kids bunting and they couldn’t make the routine plays.”"

Carvalho said he asked the other team if they wanted to stop the game after four innings and the other team said no. So they played on.

Now, many of us played baseball for years but never in a blowout like this. In lopsided games, a team could (probably should) pull their starters and maybe have some guys hit opposite-handed to avoid running up the score.

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A team could also run into outs on the bases. It’s not a great solution, and it could come off as demeaning to the other team, but it would end the game before the score ended up something ridiculous like 82-0.

Even before this game started, it was likely to be a mismatch. Old Rochester is a good Div. 3 team. Notre Dame Cristo Rey is a small Div. 4 school.

Carvalho said he mistakenly scheduled the Cristo Rey team from Lawrence rather than a much better Cristo Rey team from Dorchester. Rather than cancel the game ahead of time, Old Rochester made the bus ride to Lawrence, lions ready for slaughter.

Notre Dame Cristo Rey athletic director Georgie Rosario also knew that the game was likely to be a mismatch, but perhaps didn’t realize just how bad it would be. Either Carvalho or Rosario could have prevented the game from being played in the first place, but didn’t. To be fair, neither expected an 82-0 blowout.

As bad as an 82-0 score sounds, there’s some explanation for why it happened. And it turns out it’s not even close to the worst thing about this game.

The worst thing about this game is that the pitcher on the losing team, John Gustim, pitched all eight innings. He gave up 92 hits, and his defense made 22 errors. Eight innings, with 92 hits allowed means he faced over 100 batters.

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How many pitches did this Notre Dame Cristo Rey, high school pitcher throw? Did anyone keep track? He could have thrown 200, maybe 300 hundred pitches. Could he lift his arm after the game? What coach would allow this? That’s the real travesty here.

Maybe the team didn’t have any other pitcher who could throw the ball over the plate, but at some point, you have to do the right thing and not let a pitcher stand out there to get pummeled for eight innings in an 82-0 loss.