U-Hi rallies for win
University faced Ferris a bat short and spotted the Saxons three runs through four innings of a baseball game between Greater Spokane League title contenders on Tuesday at Whitworth College.
No problem.
All the opportunistic team did over the game’s final three innings was chase Saxons pitching ace Bud Kittredge, score 10 times and finish with 12 hits during an 11-7 comeback win that created a three-way first-place tie in the league.
The Titans, Saxons and Mead, a 10-1 winner at North Central, are all 11-2.
U-Hi had three infield hits during a nine-batter, six-run fifth inning that shockingly turned a 4-1 deficit into a 7-4 lead.
“I thought we had it going and the roof fell in,” said Saxons coach John Thacker. “Give them credit. We managed to sneak them the momentum and off to the races they went.”
That one of U-Hi’s top two offensive threats, Kenny VanSickle, was home with pneumonia didn’t seem to matter. That the Titans made six errors behind starter Travis Lewis and closer Billy Moon didn’t seem to matter.
That the Saxons perfectly executed a fourth-inning hit-and-run and successful suicide squeeze setting the table for Caleb Rath’s three-run homer and lead at Paul Merkel Field, certainly didn’t matter.
“We always say in the dugout, we’ve been there before,” said Titans coach Don Ressa. “Just don’t give in. What we did was, we had so many base hits in crucial situations with two strikes.”
The Saxons and Titans were scoreless through three innings and though U-Hi got three successive hits in the fourth, scoring on the first of three Aaron LaPlante RBIs, Kittredge shut it off by notching his seventh and eighth strikeouts.
And back came Ferris. The four-run fourth began with a one-out error, Beau Brett’s hit-and-run and Pat Burke’s squeeze bunt RBI. Rath’s towering shot over the left-centerfield fence followed.
“It felt good at the time,” he said.
The Titans responded by batting around. They had gone hitless against Kittredge for 3 1/3 innings, then put eight of the next 10 hitters on base. Included were five straight before he departed in the fifth.
U-Hi added a run in the sixth and, when the Saxons cut the lead to two on opposite-field singles by Kittredge and Kyle Krustangel, scored three times in the seventh.
Connor Brooks, who had three hits in the game, and LaPlante traded places with back-to-back doubles. Mike Conrad had his second RBI base hit and eventually scored on an error.
Meanwhile Lewis, using his 12-to-6 curve to effect, gutted out five-plus innings and freshman Moon did the rest.
He wiggled out of a bases loaded, no-out seventh-inning jam with a pair of strikeouts and was saved by right fielder Lewis’s spectacular game-ending sprawling catch of a Chad Berland sinking line drive.
Elsewhere, the Panthers rode Matt Walsh’s sixth straight win, 10-1 at North Central, into a first-place tie. Walsh fanned 10 and took a no-hitter into the seventh, allowing three total. Kevin Schneider got things started with a two-run homer in the first and finished with three hits. … West Valley kept pace with an 8-1 win in Clarkston. Greg Bradley pitched the win and had three hits, including a home run. Justin Marlow added two more homers. …Mt. Spokane won 9-3 in Cheney. Mark Purser hit a two-run homer in the first inning, Brad Moritz went 3 for 4 with a double, two runs scored and two more driven in. …Gonzaga Prep handed East Valley its fifth one-run defeat, 6-5 when Michael Stockton was hit by a pitch and eventually scored on Vince Tschirgi’s single in the bottom of the seventh inning. Brady Brunelle had tied the game for EV in the sixth with a pinch-hit three-run home run. … Central Valley won 3-2 over Lewis and Clark at Hart Field with a seventh-inning run to even winning pitcher Dane Knudson’s record. LC’s Brandon Arnold homered. … Rogers slipped past visiting Shadle Park 4-3 when Chad Como led of the bottom of the sixth inning with a triple and scored on Andrew Durant’s double. Brandon Hughes went 3 for 4 for the Highlanders.