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| Blue Springs' Kyle Reed smacks an RBI single in the bottom of the sixth inning to drive in the go-ahead run in Thursday's 12-7 win over cross-town rival Blue Springs South. |
The Blue Springs baseball team dealt the initial blow in Wednesday’s home game against cross-town rival Blue Springs South.
The Jaguars sat quietly for four innings before the game
turned into both teams throwing haymaker after haymaker, with Blue Springs
landing the final punch in the way of a five-run bottom of the sixth for a 12-7
win.
The game wasn’t exactly pretty, full of errors, walks,
several infield hits, but at the end of the day that didn’t matter.
“Style doesn’t matter as long as you get the ‘W’,” Wildcats
head coach Marc Hines said. “Sometimes you have to find ways to win and we
found a way to get it done. There was no quit in them. They kept battling and
kept battling.”
The Wildcats took an early 4-0 lead, only to see South get
it to 4-1, then take a 5-4 lead thanks to a four-run fifth aided by a two-out
error. But the Jaguars returned the favor in the bottom of the inning with a
pair of errors themselves, helping Blue Springs to a three-run inning and a 7-5
lead.
“We made too many mistakes,” South head coach Ben Baier
said. “Lately we’ve been making a lot of mistakes and we are having to fight
ourselves out of it. You can’t do that against good teams.”
The top of the sixth saw Jared Ginter tie the game with a
two-out, two-run homer, but the Wildcats kept the foot on the gas for that
decisive five-run outburst.
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| Blue Springs South's Jared Ginter (12) is congratulated by teammates after hitting a two-run homer to tie the game at 7-all in the top of the sixth. |
“We’ve been behind a few times this year and we always come
back,” Blue Springs’ Kyle Reed said. “I still felt the energy was still
positive.”
Wylson Lamb started the rally with an infield single and
went to second on an overthrow. Brian Burasco followed with a walk and Reed
poked an RBI single up the middle for the lead.
“I was just thinking that if I came to bat I needed to relax
and stay focused and do what I can to win the game,” Reed said. “I stayed back
on the ball and tried to score a run.”
That opened the floodgates, as Nick Gulotta followed with an
RBI single, Corban Hare was hit by a pitch, and David Stober connected on an
RBI single. An error brought Gulotta home and Hare scored on a wild pitch.
The Wildcats finished with two three-run innings to go along
with the five-run frame. Maybe hitting is contagious after all.
“That really is true,” said Gulotta, who finished with three
hits and three RBI. “All year long we’ve been hitting. I knew we would get runs,
especially when Wylson got on base. He starts us up.”
“We feed off each other,” added Reed.
The loss moved South to 7-2 overall, 2-2 in conference, and
despite the strong start, Baier felt a game like this might be coming.
“We gave them way too many opportunities,” he said. “We’ve
talked all year about eliminating the big inning, which, to us, is three-plus
runs. We had chances to end it and didn’t. Lately we’ve been good enough to
pull out wins. We knew it would come back to bite us, and tonight it did.”
Blue Springs moves to 5-4 overall and 2-2 in conference
action. Afterward, Gulotta was hopeful a win over a rival would be what the
team needs moving forward.
“This is a big boost,” he said. “We’ve played some tough
teams lately. Hopefully, we can get a little streak going.”
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