EDWARDSVILLE – Even the best teams, regardless of sport, are going to have the occasional not-so-good game.
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One could certainly say Edwardsville's baseball team, coming off a come-from-behind win at Kirkwood Friday evening, had one of those games early Saturday afternoon at Tom Pile Field against Parkway South; the Tigers had some uncharacteristic miscues and had to battle against some very difficult windy conditions.
Despite that, EHS kept battling and pulled twice to within two runs of the Patriots, but couldn't get past them and dropped a 16-12 decision in the first of a two-game set for the Tigers on the day.
“We've played a lot of baseball already this year,” said Tiger coach Tim Funkhouser,” particularly this week with the Friday game at Kirkwood, and what a battle that was (the Tigers came away with a 7-4 win over the Pioneers); for us to prevail in that game was a great success.
“Sure enough, for us to bounce back and turn around in the morning and play Parkway South, which always has a great quality club, well-schooled in the game; we didn't get what we wanted there. We made a lot of mistakes, and against a good team like that, you can't do it. We fought back, but we weren't able to prevail.”
The Tigers got out to a lead in the bottom of the second when Tyler Stamer connected on a two-out pitch and sent it over the boards in left-center to take a 1-0 lead through two; the Patriots responded with a four-run third highlighted by a two-run double off the bat of Justin Eads to bring in Jacob Launius and Connor Guffey. Edwardsville came to within a run back at 4-2 when Dylan Burris stroked a one-out double and was chased home by a Cole Cimarolli single.
The Patriots responded with five more runs in the fourth, topped by a three-run shot from Eads that made it 9-2; three more runs in the fifth, heped by three Edwardsville errors, pushed the score to 12-2 going into the bottom of the fifth; the Tigers, though, came up with four runs to avoid having the 10-run rule invoked; Cimarolli and Joe Wallace each had RBI singles to highlight the frame that cut the lead to 12-6.
Edwardsville pulled to 12-10 in the sixth, three of them coming of Stamer's bat in the form of a three-run homer that put a spark in the Edwardsville faithful. The Patriots responded with four runs in the seventh to extend their lead to 16-10; Edwardsville refused to go away quietly, thanks to singles from Joel Quirin and Trey Riley that pulled EHS to 16-12; a double play that saw Stamer hit a line shot back to the box, with Riley being doubled off first, cut the heart out of that rally to give the Patriots the win.
Stamer had a 3-for-5 game with three runs scored and five RBIs; Burris went 3-for-4, Collin Clayton was 2-for-4 with a double, Jake Garella was 3-for-5 with with a RBI, Quirin was 2-for-4 with a RBI and Cole Hansel and Wallace were both 1-for-3 with a RBI.
Andrew Frank took the loss for the Tigers, giving up four earned runs on nine hits while fanning one.
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