EDWARDSVILLE – Mistakes put the Metro East Bears' backs to the wall in the American Legion Great Lakes Regional baseball tournament.

The Bears committed six errors in their 12-9 loss to Rockport, Ind., at SIU-Edwardsville's Roy Lee Field Friday night, the Bears' first loss in the tournament, and sent them to a 1 p.m. elimination game today against Bay City, Mich. A win would send the Bears into Sunday afternoon's championship game, while a loss would end their season.

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“We come up and came to within one run and we walked a couple and they didn't get the ball out of the infield and all of a sudden, we walked a couple of more and we're down 3-4 runs. Unfortunately, that's how baseball is; we've been playing good the last couple of games and beat some pretty good teams,” said Bears manager Ken Schaake. “They battled back offensively, they didn't quit, we had our first two runners on the the bottom of the ninth, had the opportunity and there was a bang-bang play at second base, we hustled out a couple of plays, they made a couple of bad throws, gave us the opportunities to score there and we took advantage of it.

“We kept playing the game early on. Our pitchers weren't as sharp as they had been; (Drake) Hampton was good, but he struggled a little bit with his control. We had guys who normally throw strikes for us and it didn't work out for us, so we've got to come back tomorrow and we're in an elimination game, just similar to what we were into last year (when the Bears, facing elimination the entire weekend, fought back through the loser's bracket into the final before being defeated).”

Rockport entered the game on a 30-game winning streak and hadn't been behind in quite a while when the Bears took a 4-1 lead in the third. “I'm fortunate to say this, but that's the first time we've been behind in a long time,” said Rockport manager Jim Haaff. “We've seemed to be the visitors every time we've played and many times, we've put two up on the board in the first inning, but the kids bounced back and we were down 4-1 and started pecking away and we had some opportunities to break the game open and we didn't do it.”

The Bears got on the board first when Cole Cimarolli walked and was sacrificed to second by Collin Clayton, then singles from Jake Garella and Hampton chased him home to put the Bears up 1-0. Three more runs came in in the third when Rockport starting pitching Hunter Rowe walked three men in a row and Tyler Stamer singled in Garella and Hampton before a wild pitch brought in Mitchell Krebs. At that point, Sammy Rowan was brought in to pitch and shut the Bears down for the next few innings.

Rockport chipped away at the Bears' lead with two runs each in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings, taking the lead in the fifth on a Caleb Helms single that scored Andrew Hayden . A Chad Meyer RBI single in the sixth extended the lead as Rockport grabbed a 7-4 lead through six innings.

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A Krebs fielder's choice cut the lead to 7-5 in the seventh when Hampton scored on the fielder's choice, then Metro East got to 9-8 in the eight after Rockport and extended the lead to 9-5 in the bottom of the seventh thanks to a RBI fielder's choice from Clayton and a Garella RBI single. But the Bears could not get closer and found themselves trailing 12-8 after the top of the ninth when three straight bases-loaded walks from Chance Foss scored Spencer Deom, Rowan and Meyer. A Steven Pattan fielder's choice brought a home to get the Bears to 12-9 but Metro East couldn't score again.

Pattan extended his hitting tear in the second when he got a single for his 10th straight hit from the start of the tournament. The run came to an end in the sixth with a groundout but Pattan singled in the eighth to give him 11 hits in 12 at-bats. He drew a walk in the third and reached on a fielder's choice in the ninth.

Garella went 3-for-4 with a RBI and two runs scored for the Bears, with Hampton going 2-for-4 with a RBI and run scored; Cimarolli went 1-for-5 with with a run scored and Clayton had a RBI and run scored for the Bears, as did Krebs. Stamer was 1-for-3 with a RBI and run scored, Cole Hansel was 1-for-1, Jacob Kanallakan was 1-for-1 with a run scored.

Jakob Shuler went 3-for-6 with three runs scored for Rockport, including a double; Meyer was 2-for-2 with two runs scored and a RBI and Rowan was 3-for-6 with a triple and four runs scored. Kobe Stephens had two RBIs, Trevor Zink had a RBI, Spencer was 1-for-6 with a run scored, Hayden was 1-for-5 with a RBI and two runs scored, Helms 1-for-3 with two RBIs and a run scored and Zach Hopewell 1-for-5 with two RBIs.

Rowan got the win for Rockport, going 5.2 innings and giving up three earned runs on five hits while striking out two; Hampton took the loss, giving up five earned runs on six hits and fanning four.

Tournament updates and live scoring and play-by-play is available at legionbb.com; Sunday's final will be live-streamed at riverbender.com

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