The Home Run Heard Throughout South Jersey

by Marc Narducci | Aug 18, 2025

Luke Lesch and his Cherry Hill/Pitman teammates were simply bushed, looking to stay alive in a game that seemingly wouldn’t end.

Until Lesch settled matters.

Lesch hit a walk-off two-run home run in the bottom of the 12th inning that not only earned CHP a 7-5 win over the Washington Township Senators, but clinched the championship of the Tri-County men’s baseball league at Pitman’s Alcyon Park.

CHP won the best of three championship series 2-0.

Imagine the feeling of hitting a walk-off homer to win a championship. To top it off, it was the first walk-off homer in the career for Lesch at any level.

“That was pretty cool, especially after that long game, everybody’s bodies were killing them,” Lesch said. “Going to a Game Three would have been tough for us, honestly.”

Lesch is a 2019 graduate of Gloucester Catholic and 2024 Rider grad. During his Rider career, he had 214 hits, 28 home runs and 165 RBIs and a .377 on-base percentage.

He knows what it is like to go deep, but had been taking some good-natured ribbing from his teammates. That’s because this season, the 6-foot-5, 250-pound Lesch, entered the game having hit two home runs in the 11-team men’s league.

“My teammates had been busting me because I am a bigger guy, so they wanted me to hit the long ball, but I only had two coming in,” Lesch said.

Washington Township’s Nick Evangelista came in relief in the bottom of the sixth and had thrown six shutout innings before he yielded a leadoff single in the 12th to third baseman Sean Cottrell.

Up came Lesch, who got ahead of the count 2-1 and then crushed a changeup over the rightfield fence.

“I was kind of sitting on a pitch and I got it,” Lesch said about the changeup. “He left the pitch up a bit and it was right in my swing path, and I caught it pretty well.”

The sound when he connected with his wooden bat suggested that the ball was going to travel a long way.

“When I hit it, I thought it was definitely going out, but I had to run a little bit just in case,” Lesch said. “But I had a really good feeling when it came off the bat.”

Imagine running the bases and then being greeted by his teammates, some who showered him with water.

Lost in the late-game dramatics was the pitching performance of lefthander Cooper Root, a 2021 Triton graduate who just finished his career at Gwynedd Mercy, where he had a .329 career average in 124 games and a 4.80 ERA in 46 career appearances.

Root, who started the game against Washington Township in right field, shut out the Senators by pitching the final four innings.

When first asked how many innings he ended up pitching, Root responded, “It felt like 3,000.”

He had a natural reaction to winning the championship.

“It felt really good,” he said. “I came over here to do this.”

During the previous two years, CHP had reached the final only to lose both seasons to the Roughriders, a team with deep Haddonfield roots.

Root had one of the best vantage points to Lesch’s home run since he was the on-deck batter.

“Just the relief you feel after seeing that ball go over the fence, it was awesome,” Root said. “It’s such a cool feeling.”

The win was especially meaningful to CHP starting pitcher/designated hitter Chris Rollins, the 38-year-old righthander, who pitched the first 5 2/3 innings. When he left as a pitcher, Rollins stayed in the game as a DH and finished 3-for-5 with two RBIs.

He has been with the team for years and savored this victory, especially after the previous two seasons.

“I have been playing with these guys forever and to get the W, it was so satisfying,” said Rollins, a former Winslow Township star and the current pitching coach at Rowan University. “To be able to celebrate with these guys, there is no better feeling.”

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Photo: Luke Lesch holding the Carter Cup awarded to the Tri-County champions / Marc Narducci

Author: Marc Narducci

The Home Run Heard Throughout South Jersey

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