Twin brothers Ben and Abe Crall do what twins do.
They mirror each other – but in a way few other twins ever could.
On March 29, Abe Crall pitched a no-hitter to lead the Western Brown High School baseball team over Clinton Masse. Then, five days later, Ben Crall did the same against Goshen High School. Both efforts came on the road, and in both wins, the Broncos scored three runs.
That was just enough for Ben Crall on April 3. Although he didn’t allow a hit and struck out 12 Goshen batters, he threw 105 pitches in the seven-inning contest, with four walks and two hit batsmen in the Broncos’ 3-2 victory at the Goshen High School field.
“His fastball – I think it was the fastest he’s ever thrown,” Jon Crall, Ben Crall’s coach and father, said of the key for Ben Crall. “We didn’t have the radar gun but … I thought he was throwing even harder the last few innings.”
While the Broncos’ head coach said it was the junior hurler’s best effort of the young season (he improved to 1-1), although it was his first high school no-hitter, the elder Crall stopped short of saying it was his best high school pitching performance – mainly because of the walks and hit batsmen.
“It is a work in progress,” Jon Crall said. “He’s like that every year, then by the end of the summer, he’s lights out. He throws all winter so I think it’s probably more of a nerves thing.”
With the win, the Broncos moved to 2-0 and in first place in the American Division of the Southern Buckeye Athletic and Academic Conference (2-2 overall). Still, according to their head coach, there’s still plenty of work to be done.
On offense, they had nine hits, but nothing that stood out to their coach. Abe Crall went 3-for-3, and senior Matt Frye was 2-for-4 with two runs batted in. Senior Seth Barber also had a pair of hits, along with an RBI.
“The last couple years we’ve had trouble scoring runs,” Jon Crall said (the Broncos have scored 18 runs in four games so far this season). “But by the end of the year I think we’ll be scoring a lot of runs. Our top four or five guys in the lineup, when they get rolling …”
The Broncos did have an error, but overall, the head coach was happy with where the team was defensively.
“We’re coming together on defense, which is nice to see,” he said. “If you can field the ball, you’ll have success. And we’re having fewer and fewer errors. If you can catch the baseball, you’ll win high school baseball games.”
And pitching-wise, it’s not just the Crall brothers who are getting it done.
“We have a couple other kids, too – another junior and a sophomore,” Jon Crall said of the Broncos’ staff, which he said was a strength of the team before the season. “We only have five juniors on the roster and three of them are good pitchers.
“It’s my sixth year as the head coach. I think this is probably the best team I’ve had,” he added. “When I had this senior class when they were freshmen, we knew this would be the year they’d be successful.”