DREXEL HILL, PA — Joey Graziani, meet Carlos Ruiz.

It was certainly humbling to realize that some players on the field weren’t even born yet when the Phillies folk-hero catcher hit the shortest World Series walk-off winner ever in 2008 on a dribbler down the third base line to win Game 3 against the Rays.

There were shades of that in Drexel Hill today as Ursinus commit Joey Graziani was able to leg out a softly hit grounder to third base to give Bonner a much needed win Wednesday afternoon against Devon Prep.

While technically right outside the Delco border, we should note here that Devon Prep has some Delco guys including DBN podcast alum Johnny Doogan who got the start on the mound for the Tide. They are a team we plan on covering more as we continue to grow along with some other “borderline” teams like Malvern Prep, Friends Central, and Shipley that are outside of Delco borders but have some Delco talent.

Anyway, back to the action.

Bonner got on the board first with an error in the bottom of the second, but Devon Prep was able to have three runs cross the plate in the top of the third off of Bonner starter Danny Buckton.

Star sophomore catcher Caleb Flannery stroked an RBI single to tie the game up at 1-1, and later in the inning with two outs, Doogan helped himself out with an RBI single to give the Tide a 2-1 lead. An error in the next at bat extended that lead to 3-1.

Flannery would strike again in the top of the fourth with a two-out RBI single to make it a 4-1 Devon Prep lead, and things were looking good for the Tide.

That was enough to knock out Bonner starter Danny Buckton and bring in Johnny Ortegae out of the bullpen.

In the bottom of the fifth, Bonner was finally able to get some life against Doogan, the Broomall native. Gavin DiRita and Cory Sheridan hit back-to-back singles to start the inning, and Joey Graziani did his job with a sac bunt to move them over.

The small ball paid off for Bonner as Jack Brown hit a sac fly to score DiRita, and then Sergio Hernandez ripped an 0-1 pitch into left field to cut the Devon Prep lead to 4-3.

After Johnny Ortegae tossed his third scoreless inning of relief, Bonner knew that they were running out of time with just six outs to work with as they were staring at a 2-5 record in the PCL.

Ryan Friel stayed hot with a single to lead off the inning and would advance to second on a wild pitch. Devon Prep took out Doogan after a great day with 5.1 innings pitched, three earned runs and five strikeouts. Liam Jung was out of the bullpen in relief.

With two outs in the sixth, Friel was still standing on second. That was until Gavin DiRita came up massive with a two-out single on the first pitch to score Friel and make this a brand new ballgame heading into the seventh.

After Devon went down in order in the seventh, Bonner got a leadoff walk from Joey Graziani and a bunt single by Jack Brown. Sergio Hernandez moved them over to second and third with a groundout, but that led to Michael Coleman being intentionally walked.

Not the worst decision when there was an open base and Coleman was our hitter of the week last week after he went 7/10.

Jung got a huge strikeout of Ryan Friel to give the Tide two outs, and on the next pitch, he got Owen Lockhart to ground out to end the threat.

Devon again went quietly in the top of the eighth in 1-2-3 fashion, again setting the stage for the Friars to walk it off.

Cole Romano was hit by a pitch to start the inning, and courtesy runner Josh Collado came into the game. That paid off big time as he stole second to get himself in scoring position, and then advanced to third on a wild pitch.

With two outs in the inning, Joey Graziani stepped up and got himself into a 2-1 count. He hit a slow roller to third baseman Christian Leckman who made a pretty good effort but with Graziani’s speed it would have taken a perfect play, and Collado came home with the winning run.

Bonner improves to 4-3 in the PCL with the win and will head to Lansdale Catholic for their next game on Tuesday before heading to O’Hara for rivalry day on Thursday.

A huge shoutout to Johnny Ortegae, who turned in five shutout innings of relief out of the bullpen for Bonner. Obviously the offense will get the credit for coming back, but that doesn’t happen without him.

As for Devon Prep, this is their fourth PCL loss by two runs or less and third by exactly one run. New Head Coach Mike Palumbo has done a great job with the program so far and it’s only a matter of time before the results start showing up in the win column. Devon falls to 1-4 in the PCL and will head to Father Judge on Tuesday for their next game.