PLYMOUTH — It’s playoff time, so if you get punched in the mouth, you need to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get right back in there.
Well, OK, sometimes in between the punching and the getting back in there you have to go to the emergency room and let them put your face bones back together.
That was Jake Novak’s experience this week.
The Plymouth North High senior missed most of the Blue Eagles’ first-round win in the MIAA Division 2 baseball tournament on Monday. His totally valid excuse for early dismissal — he took a pitch square in the upper jaw in the first inning against Bay Path and suffered a fractured cheekbone.
Fellow senior Will Novak’s initial impression when his brother came home from the ER: “Wow, his face is really messed up. I definitely thought he was out for the rest of the season.”
Instead, Jake Novak was back in there for Wednesday’s second-round matchup against Billerica Memorial, having been cleared by doctors, who determined there was no concussion. Wearing a softball-style facemask while playing third base, and sporting a wrap-around cage on his batting helmet, Jake Novak flawlessly handled the only groundball hit to him and delivered a big RBI single as North did all its scoring in the bottom of the sixth inning in a 3-0 win.
Although there were many stars in this one — junior right-handed pitcher Liam Pearson threw a 5-hit shutout; Matt Nardone (RBI single) and Danny Kenney (sac fly) drove in the other runs in the sixth; and catcher Conor McLeish short-circuited a Billerica rally in the top of the sixth by throwing out a runner trying to steal second — it was Jake Novak whom North coach Dwayne Follette singled out at the end of his postgame huddle.
The Blue Eagles responded with a big round of applause for their once-fallen/now-upright teammate.
“Getting hit like that and coming back two days later with a broken face, that’s really what this team is about,” Pearson said. “It’s about family and how close we are and how we can pick each other up when we’re down. It’s really something.”
“It really just shows what kind of team this is, what kind of kid he is,” agreed Nardone. “It’s not easy to go out and break your face and then next game come back and get a huge hit. He wanted to play so bad. It was awesome to hear the news (that he was cleared).”
Jake Novak, who came in hitting .277 on the season, said he wasn’t apprehensive getting back in the batter’s box. He flied out to center in the second inning and grounded to short in the fifth before coming through in the clutch in the sixth with his fourth RBI of the season.
“With that cage, I definitely had a lot of confidence going in there, knowing that I’m protected,” he said of facing live pitching again. “It couldn’t get any worse.”
Jake Novak sported some redness over his upper lip but said things are improving. “I’ve been icing it like crazy to try to get (the swelling) to go down and for me to ready for this game,” he said. “My top row of teeth (on my left side) are all numb, but that’s about it.”
Top-seeded Plymouth North (18-4) will host a Div. 2 quarterfinal on Sunday at 4 p.m. against No. 9 Westwood (16-6). The Eagles’ chances of successfully defending their 2024 state crown hung in the balance for most of the day, but Pearson was up the challenge, muffling No. 17 Billerica (11-11) and buying time for his teammates to get the bats going.
Pearson improved to 5-0 on the season and lowered ERA to 0.98.
“Just a bull,” Follette said of the 5-7 right-hander. “All he’s done it perform, perform, perform and force us into (making him) our Number 2 (starter) behind Danny Kenney (6-1, 1.48 ERA). He’s given us quality outings every time he’s pitched. I wasn’t surprised by what he did today.”
Said Pearson: “That was really close all the way through. Throughout the entire game I had to stay focused; I couldn’t let up.”
Will Novak, the Patriot League Keenan Division MVP, got the sixth inning started by drawing a one-out walk, which prompted a Billerica pitching change. Out went starter Cam Amenkowicz, who hadn’t allowed a hit. Reliever Drew Mello plunked Noah Mackenzie to put two runners on, and Nardone followed with a sharp single to left to open the scoring.
“I got the fastball I wanted and I just had to put it in play,” said Nardone, who’s hitting .323 with 16 RBIs. “That’s what I did. It put a run on the board.”
Kenney’s sac fly plated Mackenzie for a 2-0 lead, and McLeish and Jake Novak followed with singles for a 3-0 cushion.
Now Plymouth North will try to avenge a recent 3-2 loss to Westwood at the Don Fredericks Tournament, which was hosted by Braintree but held at BC High due to field conditions.
“Solid tournament game against a good team,” Follette said of Wednesday’s showing. “And you gotta play this way; you gotta play clean. I thought we played real clean baseball, made all the plays. Now we’ve got a very good Westwood team that’s already beaten us once this year. We know what we’re up against. We just have to find a way to win.”
This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Fractured cheekbone can’t slow down Plymouth North baseball standout