After a weekend that saw two losses for the Concordia Golden Bears, including an opening day blown save for myself, we have new life this week. We put Saturday’s extra innings loss and Sunday’s blow out behind us and went to work on Monday with junior righty Chris Peterson on the hill.
Peterson gave us four strong innings before turning things over to our bullpen. In this case that was me. Making my second appearance of the season I took the mound to start the fifth inning. It took a batter to figure out the umpire’s strike zone, as I walked the first hitter throwing fastballs that I thought were waist high in the middle of the plate. Realizing the umpire would not call high pitches I started to work the knees. The next hitter ground into a 4-3 double play erasing the lead-off walk. After an inside fastball clipped the next hitter to put him on first base with two outs, the last hitter of the inning grounded out to shortstop to end the inning.
It felt good to put up a shutout inning after blowing a save in my first outing. In my second inning of work I got two outs on two pitches before striking out the third hitter for my first 1-2-3 inning of the season. My third and final inning including giving up one run on three base hits, while striking out the side in the process. My day ended with three full innings of work, one run on three hits, with one walk and four strikeouts.
But in the end we could not overcome our early deficit and fell to Mansfield (Pa.) University 7-6 to push our record to 0-3.
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| Henley Field in Lakeland, Fla. |
Today was a new day though. We came out with a better mentality than we had in each of our previous three games. We were facing Wheeling Jesuit (W.V.) University at historic Henley Field, home of Florida Southern College, and the former spring training home of the Detroit Tigers.
We got a great start from freshman Adam Kramer; making his first collegiate start on the mound he kept us in the ball game long enough for our bats to come alive against WJU’s pitching staff. Adam worked into the sixth inning allowing just one big inning when he surrendered five runs in the third inning. After reliever Ty Hall closed out the sixth inning, the Concordia bats came alive. CU hitters generated seven runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to take a 7-5 lead.
Making his first collegiate start, first baseman Elliot Powell led the offense with a 2 for 4 day. Powell electrified the dugout with his drag bunt for a base hit in the second inning. Hall threw the final three and one-third innings of the game to pick up the win for Concordia. Hall would allow just one run over that time while allowing four hits and striking out three. He really stepped up for the team and delivered a clutch performance.
In the eighth inning the coaches sent me to the bullpen to get my arm loose to possibly throw the ninth inning. I was excited to get a second save opportunity and to close out the first win of the season for the team. After throwing just a few pitches in the pen, the coaches made the decision to sit me down and go with Hall for the ninth inning. This turned out to be a great decision as he kept rolling through the WJU lineup and finished the game with a big time strikeout.
For the first time this season we were on the winning side of the post game handshakes, all the guys were happy to finally get the first one out of the way. Now we just have to keep the good momentum rolling into our next game on Thursday against Charleston (W.V.) University
Tomorrow’s day off will provide some much needed rest, especially for senior Sam Fagely who has caught on four consecutive days now. We are going as a team to the Tigers-Phillies spring training game in Lakeland, Fla., after a light morning practice. It should be a fun day to kick back and relax at a professional baseball game. It will give all the guys a chance to enjoy the win from today and keep improving so we can be in top form the rest of the week and on into conference series which start March 26-27 against Southwest Minnesota State, who just happens to be staying at our resort here in Florida.
For more information on the Concordia Golden Bears including bios, schedule, and statistics go to www.cugoldenbears.com
-Go Golden Bears-
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