CARROLLTON - The 2018 baseball season has begun, and already there’s been a ball game that has a good chance of being the craziest we will see all year.
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The Carrollton Hawks entered the top of seventh inning holding a 9-1 lead over the Triopia Trojans.
Triopia shocked the Hawks and maybe themselves as they scored the eight runs required to tie the game and held on in the bottom half. As a result, the game ended in a 9-9 tie due to darkness in Carrollton on a cold Tuesday afternoon.
“It definitely feels like a loss,” Gabe Jones said. “It was an eight-run inning. We hit a lot of people and walked a lot of people. It came back to bite us. The cold might’ve had something to do with it, but at the end of the day you gotta bear down and try to make plays and throw strikes.”
“Give Triopia credit. They did the things they had to do in that last inning. They never quit, and they deserve to have a happy bus as they drive back,” Carrollton head coach Jeff Krumwiede said. “We just didn’t make plays, and our pitchers had done a great job up until the seventh. [We] had trouble making plays under pressure and consequently, we’re looking at a tie game that people are gonna say we should’ve won and it got away from us.’
Jones pitched three innings of shutout ball giving up two hits. He struck out seven batters and walked one. At the plate, he managed to get on base all four times with two walks, an error, and a double.
“I felt good. I [saw] the ball well. I got a couple of walks and maybe a questionable hit,” Jones said laughing. “I felt good today pitching. I was a little cold, but I got it done. Coach says everything happens for a reason. We’ll treat [this] as a wake-up call and come back tomorrow.”
The Hawks did most of their scoring in the first inning knocking in six runs.
Bowker, Kyle Waters, and Bottom got on base, and Tyler Barnett drove Bowker home on a sacrifice fly. The catcher, Hayden Stringer roped a two-run double to left-center to bring in Waters and Bottom. Two batters later, Jones hit an RBI double and the nine-hitter, Curtis Lake laced a singled up the middle that scored Blake Struble and Jones as the Hawks batted around the lineup.
In the bottom of the third, sophomore Ethan Brannan knocked another two-run double to drive in Jones and Struble again. An error on the play let Jones score and advanced Brannan to third base. He finished the game going 2-for-3 and reached base three times. Brannan made it 9-0 when he scored on a past ball moments later.
Bowker would go 2-for-5, and Lake finished 1-for-3 with three RBI.
After the third inning, the Hawks would score no more, which also leaves another could’ve, should’ve factor. For Krumwiede, he was aiming to get a ten-run rule in the coming innings given the score.
“I thought we could get a couple runs in the fourth, fifth, and the sixth [innings] and be done with it,” Krumwiede said. “[Triopia’s] pitchers did a nice job, and they made plays on defense that we weren’t making. We had opportunities and didn’t execute.”
Triopia’s Zach Rouland went 3-for-5 with four RBI, and Zach Thompson was 2-for-5.
Barnett replaced took over for Jones in the fourth inning due to Krumwiede putting them on pitch counts. The Trojans loaded the bases with no outs, but Barnett got a strikeout and got the next two batters to fly out.
“We gotta do a better job of closing out. We had seniors on the hill in the seventh inning that needed to get three outs, and they didn’t have a lot of help behind them,” Krumwiede said.
Shawn Bell led off the seventh with a double. Garrett Snow and Alec Coil each walked, which set up Rouland for a two-run single to make it 9-3. Krumwiede called in Bowker, and initially, he couldn’t stop the bleeding.
He hit the first batter in the back then the Trojans drove in three more runs to make it 9-6. At that point, the improbable seemed realistic with the bases loaded and the top of the order due up with still nobody out.
Bowker got Thompson to fly out, who was ninth batter in the inning, but it scored a runner on third base. Next up was Bell and he grounded into a force out at second base, but it scored the runner from third to make it 9-8.
Carrollton had two chances to end the game with two outs, but multiple infield errors allowed the Trojans to push across the tying run before the final out occurred.
The Hawks still had the bottom of the seventh to win the game, and it started out brightly with Jones and Brannan drawing walks. However, Lake, Bowker, and Waters all recorded outs and the game ended in a tie as the sun was setting.
“We needed a wake-up call to realize when you’re ahead 9-0 and 9-1 you can’t let your foot off the pedal. Part of that was me,” Krumwiede. “We did some things that probably helped that along. We should’ve put the hammer down and finished. March is about learning lessons.”
It was an ideal first six innings, but not the final score that the Hawks had envisioned for their first game of the season.
Carrollton is coming off three straight seasons with regional championships and perhaps the most experienced team in the area. The Hawks boast six seniors that have been involved in various ways for all four years, and all have been starting since they were sophomores. Juniors, Gabe Jones and Nathan Walker are three-year starters as well. Unfortunately, Walker was not available today due to being sick, but Krumwiede said he might back for today's game at Bunker Hill at 4:30 p.m.
“It’s early. We’ve got guys playing in different spots this year and some different things,” Krumwiede said. “You learn valuable lessons, and you don’t lose a game you gotta feel pretty good.”
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