Gold, Thunder slip up on final day of tourney
Stephen Coleman
Monday, July 6, 2009
Sunday’s action at the Trusler Sports Complex showed a wide variety of baseball for Emporia squads. The Emporia A-16 Gold maintained an edge over the Andover Trojans in a 10-8 victory early, but were unable to keep their momentum.
The next two games didn’t favor the hometown teams as much though with the hosting Emporia Thunder being ousted in a late 7-6 comeback by the Topeka Lugnuts, then a 13-0 pummeling of the Gold by the tournament champion SCK Brave Sox.
The early game Sunday pitted two struggling teams, with Andover and the Gold matching up. Emporia had lost its first three games, and the Trojans let a two-run lead evaporate into a run-ruling deficit the day before.
The Gold put immediate pressure on Andover, putting five consecutive runners on to lead off the game, scoring three. A sacrifice fly by Andover tightened the score slightly in the bottom of the first. A leadoff walk to Lane Shirley in the second functioned as giving the run back with two advancing groundouts and an infield hit to deep short by Tanner Page.
Andover then slugged their way back into the game in the third, with two singles, a sacrifice bunt, and three more singles to tie the game, but with the go-ahead runner at third, Chase Speer retired Trojan left fielder Matt Hurse on strikes to end the inning and the threat.
“(Speer) pitched really well for me again,” Gold coach Alex Reyes said. “He’s a good pitcher. He doesn’t throw much offspeed stuff, but he changes his arm motion and doesn’t give (opponents) the same looks back-to-back.”
Andover took the lead back in the fourth, with an unearned run scoring on a double steal attempt. Trailing at this point seemed to only fire up the Gold instead of intimidate them, as they got consecutive singles from Jackson Perez and Speer to lead off the fifth, with both eventually scoring to give Emporia back the lead.
“I’ve seen that before,” Reyes said. “Earlier this year when that happens, the other team ties it or gets ahead, we just hang our heads and don’t show very much fight. I’ve been getting on them all year about it. This morning, they actually acted like they wanted to win a ballgame.”
The Gold also got two more in the sixth to give them a three-run cushion, keyed by an RBI double by Matt Weatherred.
“He’s one of the best hitters we have on this team,” Reyes said. “I put him at leadoff so he can see as many opportunities as he can. He had a great game, a good tournament. Yesterday he led off the game with a triple. He’s a pretty good hitter and it showed.”
Andover wasn’t done, as its own resiliency shone through with a three-run, game-tying outburst in the sixth. Two walks and two errors fueled the Trojan rally and seemed to give Emporia little hope. The Gold got a gift baserunner via error with two outs, but mustered nothing more, leaving Andover to regain its momentum in the bottom of the inning.
Chase Speer then had his first one-two-three inning on seven pitches.
Boosted by that effort, and the top of the order coming up, Emporia scored twice in the eighth, and Speer sat down the Trojans in order for the second consecutive inning for the victory.
The Gold’s second game was a different tale to tell, as they were run-ruled by the SCK Brave Sox 13-0. CSK pitcher Jacob Spruill threw three perfect innings, striking out 10 of the 12 hitters he faced.
“(Pruill) threw pretty hard and got ahead, obviously, of every hitter that we had,” Reyes said.
Emporia finished the tournament 1-3, and the hosting Emporia Thunder received a third-place finish with a 3-1 record.
The Thunder wrapped up bracket play on Saturday with a perfect record in an 11-1 victory over the Gold, but they finished the tournament on Sunday with their 7-6 loss to Topeka thinking what might have been.
“One bad inning and we’re watching the championship game instead of playing in it,” Thunder coach Joe Silva said. “We’ve done this four times this year, go into the later innings, have substantial leads, and then we have been unable to find a way to close the deal. I told my team that baseball is a game of mistakes, and that the team that takes advantage of those mistakes usually wins the game, and today we didn’t do that.”
The Thunder begins the State 15 AA High School USSSA Tournament on Wednesday against Mulvane at 6:30 p.m. at Glennen Field. The rest of the tournament will be played in Lenexa at the 3-and-2 baseball complex.
The Gold are back in action tonight in a doubleheader against Junction City at Soden’s Grove. Game One is scheduled to start at 6 p.m.