Call Emporia High unsatisfied.
The Spartan baseball team is 3-1 after two comebacks — one resulting in a victory — in its doubleheader with Junction City on Tuesday night at Soden’s Grove. And even though they left Soden’s on a winning note — the Spartans won Game Two 8-6 — they still want to show that they’re better than the poor defensive play and mistakes made in Game One, in which they made seven errors and blew a 7-6 seventh-inning lead, losing 9-7 in eight innings.
“Tonight, I think our preparation... when we walked out here tonight in the first game, you could tell we were a little lackadaisical, I think, and I just don’t think we were ready to play,” EHS coach Mike Strickland said. “... (We’re) not very good right now on the preparation, and that’s my fault. I need to make sure the kids are ready to go from the start.”
Emporia did show, in both games, that it was ready to claw its way back from behind. The Game Two victory saw them come back from a 4-1 deficit in the third to tie the game, then erase a 5-4 deficit with a four-run sixth. Three Junction City errors and a wild pitch in the bottom of the fourth helped EHS get the game tied with only one hit, an RBI double by Brett Lechien. Remington Pinick was hit with a pitch, and Corey Bacon and Chase Speer both reached on errors during the rally; all three went on to score runs.
Bacon got plunked to lead off the bottom of the sixth, then stole second base. After Derek Nielsen struck out, Lechien lined a single to the left of the third baseman, and the Spartans waved Bacon home. The left fielder’s throw was up the third-base line, allowing him to score easily and tie the game.
Two batters later, with runners on second and third, Matt Fry grounded a single to right, scoring Lechien and Brian Keisler and making it 7-5 Spartans.
“I was just thinking (about) hitting the ball hard, put it in play,” Fry said. “I think we only had one out then, so if I could, just sacrifice myself and get a run in there anyway we could.”
Fry stole second, and Emporia got another insurance run when Jacob Loucks grounded a soft single to the right of second baseman Tyler Ross, who stopped the ball with a dive, but couldn’t stop Fry from scoring from second. Fry closed out the game in the ninth, sealing a win for Nielsen, who relieved in the top of the fifth.
“They just kept playing tonight,” Strickland said. “They found a way. It wasn’t pretty — it wasn’t pretty baseball by either team, but they found a way, and they kept battling. And we feel like, as a team right now, we really let the first game slip away from us.”
In a Game One that featured 13 errors combined from both teams, miscues by left fielder Zach Gifford and starting pitcher Dominic Rodriguez on the game’s first two batters, plus a later error by Fry at third, helped Junction City put together a 4-0 first-inning lead on just two hits. But Emporia erased a 6-1 deficit with three runs in the fourth inning and three in the sixth to take a 7-6 lead.
In the bottom of the sixth, Bacon reached on Junction City center fielder Christian Muniz’s second error, then came home when Fry cranked an RBI triple into the right-center field gap. Gifford grounded out to third to plate Fry and tie the game at 6, and Loucks grounded a single through the middle to score Lechien and give the Spartans the lead.
Loucks went to the mound in the top of the seventh to close the game out, but after Thomas Plummer drew a walk, pinch-hitter Mitchell Jeffrey stroked a two-out single into the gap in right center, scoring Plummer to extend the game. The Spartans didn’t threaten to score in the seventh, sending the game to extras. In the top of the eighth, two infield hits, a hit batsman and a throwing error loaded the bases for Junction’s Thomas Plummer, and Fry couldn’t cleanly field Plummer’s ground ball to third. His throw got away from Rodriguez at first, resulting in an error on each and two runs scoring.
“I missed pitches, people missed plays,” Loucks said. “... Nobody was prepared that first game. We had a lack of mindset that we could make the plays, and we let that get to us. And we can’t do that.”
Three Junction City errors in the bottom half of the eighth, including two by second baseman Ross, made things interesting, but the Blue Jays closed out EHS with two runners left on base.
Loucks and Fry each had four hits and three RBIs over the two games, and Fry had both a double and a triple.
A 3-1 record may seem like a terrific start for a team coming off a 5-16 season in 2008, but the Spartans feel as if they have a ways to go.
“But I mean, 3-1, we’re happy,” Loucks said, “but we’re always striving for more wins. We’re always wanting to be better than what we’re showing right now.”
Tuesday at Soden’s Grove
Game One
Junction City 401 100 12 — 9 11 6
Emporia 100 303 00 — 7 7 7
WP — Dill. LP — Loucks.
2B — JC: Burch; EMP: Loucks. 3B — EMP: Fry.
Game Two
Junction City 010 310 1 — 6 9 4
Emporia 000 314 x — 8 7 3
WP — Nielsen. LP — Ruiz.
2B — JC: Dill, Mann, Morgan, Smith; EMP: Fry, Lechien.