EDWARDSVILLE – When it comes to baseball, one pitch, one hit, can sometimes make the difference in how a game turns out.
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Blake Vandiver can tell you all about it.
“One pitch will do it,” Vandiver said of his bases-clearing triple that sparked an eight-run fifth inning for the Metro East Bears in their Illinois American Legion District 22 playoff opener against Smithton/Freeburg at Edwardsville's Hoppe Park Wednesday night. The explosion helped send the Bears past the 76ers 9-2 and into a game against Highland, with a spot in Saturday's final at stake.
But Vandiver's triple was the culmination of good work by his teammates in front of him, Vandiver felt. “At the beginning of the inning, everyone right in front of me did a great job of getting on base and being patient, putting myself in that situation to make a play for our team – that's all on them. I put the ball in play; they did all the dirty work for me.
“The first two at-bats (Vandiver had) I hit the ball all right; the first one was a line drive and the second one was a fly ball. I was just trying to shorten it up (his swing) a little bit and get a good piece of bat on it – all credit to them (his teammates).”
Kade Burns got the ball for the postseason opener and gave up two runs (one earned) in the top of the first, but settled down and took control of Smithton's lineup. “I wasn't too nervous,” Burns said of the early 76er lead. “I knew we'd get some runs across; we weren't facing a dominating pitcher. We were just kind of missing some balls, we were hitting it off the end of the bat and getting jammed.
“Our team made a lot of adjustments and that showed throughout the game. They definitely had the momentum after the first inning; we kind of started off a little slow and made a few bad defensive plays, couldn't get anything going offensively. After we started hitting, everything seemed to go our way; we captured the momentum and we carried it throughout the rest of the game.”
Tonight's game against Highland won't be an easy task. “That'll be a tough team,” Vandiver said of Highland. “They played against Belleville very well (in a 7-1 win over the Hilgards Tuesday night), so it's going to be a tough game for us; with how we can play, we know can go out there and win baseball games. We can go as far as we want to go.”
