Radford baseball commemorates teammate Joey Raccuia with walk-off win days after his passing

Sports have proven to work in mysterious ways.

Events and emotions outside the game occasionally appear in awestruck moments on the playing field — indescribable to the eyes and categorized as supernatural. 

That happened on Friday for Radford baseball, rallying in the ninth inning to beat Bryant, 5-4, on a walk-off single just two days after teammate and freshman Joey Raccuia tragically passed away due to a car accident. 

Head coach Alex Guerra largely credited the bittersweet victory to the 19-year-old.

Just over 48 hours after Radford freshman Joey Raccuia's life was tragically cut short in a car accident, the Highlanders pulled off a ninth-inning comeback to beat Bryant with walk-off run.

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter)

"(Raccuia) was clearly with us today," head coach Alex Guerra said to Radford Athletics. "There's absolutely no question about it. If you don't believe in a higher power, you better start believing after that. It was fate."

The Highlanders started out hot, scoring two in the first inning on left fielder Brady Powell’s double to right. Matching the Bulldogs one-run frame to lead 3-1 entering the fourth.

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The two teams’ offenses traveled in opposite directions after that. Bryant scored a run in the fourth, sixth and seventh innings — the latter two from a wild pitch and error. Radford went quiet at the plate, collecting just one hit across the five innings, and had struck out in three of its four plate appearances against the Bulldogs current arm, right-hander Landon White.

The final inning’s script seemed penned before it started. 

And it was until catcher Brady Whitacre’s at-bat. Down to their final out, Whitacre approached the batter’s box with a 4-4 game, bases loaded and a different pitcher than White. On a 2-2 count, he laced a single past Bryant right-hander Justin Dressler’s behind-the-back glove to score the winning run.

One swing. One moment. Forever remembered. x

— Radford Baseball (@RadfordBaseball)

"We were just able to string together good at-bats when we needed to," Guerra said. "Obviously, (Whitacre) gave us the opportunity to win the game. There's nobody else I want up with the game on the line than that guy."

White jerseys raced onto Carter Memorial Stadium as infielder Noah Toole touched home plate, mobbing Whitacre at first base with hugs and eventual dogpile on the outskirts of the infield. Guerra and his coaching staff embraced one another, and shed tears, near the dugout.

The team met on Thursday at noon to decide whether they wanted to still host their three-game series against Bryant, according to Radford Athletics. 

The vote was unanimous. 

"We knew before the game, no matter how it went, we were going to stick together," Whitacre said to Radford Athletics. "We had the conversation too of 'What would Joey want to do?' Joey would want to go out and play. There was no doubt in our mind that we weren't going to play the game."

Raccuia played in two of Radford’s first six games, receiving three at-bats and manning second base in the Highlanders final two games against Bucknell last weekend.

Joey’s father, Joe Raccuia, played at Radford from 1994-1995 and was a team captain during the 1995 season when they secured a school record of 30 wins. He worked as an assistant coach for the Highlanders in 1996, and was the head coach from 2008-2019.