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SWS rallies past Manheim for New Era M-M crown
By Bruce Morgan
Lititz Record Express
Published: Jul 17, 2008 4:24 PM EST
Manheim -
Manheim VFW Maroon skipper Jeff Knosp could have been in Cancun on Tuesday
night.
But it's not all the time that your team gets to play in
the New Era Tournament finals.
So he caught a flight home from
vacation after learning that his squad beat Mountville on Monday night to
advance to the big game.
Unfortunately, Manheim's bid to win its
first New Era Midget-Midget title since 2000 fell a little short, as
Strasburg-Willow Street rallied from a 4-0 deficit with six runs in the
bottom of the fourth and held on to win 6-4 in the championship game at Mt.
Joy's Kunkle Field.
Just one night earlier, the shoe was on the
other foot. It was Manheim which came from behind with a big 11-run rally
en route to a 12-3 conquest of Mountville in the
semi-finals.
"That happens, that's baseball, that's why
we play the game," Knosp said. "If it had been that easy, I
wouldn't have come back from Cancun, Mexico to see this championship
game. But I believed in our kids and I would do it all over again. I have
no regrets."
Nor should the Manheim team, which ended a very
impressive season with a 32-4 record.
"I'd like to play
this game over again, I'm sure everyone would, and maybe the outcome
would be different," Knosp said. "But I'm not disappointed in
our season. We did a great job. Sure it's disappointing to come in
second, but they have to understand that that's the way life is. I have
to understand that's how life is. In my heart, they're all winners.
Both teams."
Things looked good for Manheim when it scored two
runs in the top of the first in support of pitcher Colin Fry, who was
nearly unhittable in a 12-0 win over the Warwick Phillies in the
quarter-finals. On Tuesday, Ben Bomberger (2-for-4) led off with a triple
off of SWS starter Brett Brooks and scored on Kyle Winters' RBI double.
Winter eventually scored when Blake Reiff reached on an error.
Then
they added one more in the third, as Winters (2-for-2) worked a free pass,
stole second base and scored on a wild pitch. In the fourth, Bomberger
sliced a two-out base hit to right field and scored on Hunter Pearson's
RBI base hit to center field, making it 4-0.
But their lead
unraveled in the bottom of the fourth. Brooks led off with a walk and went
to third on Josh Wright's hit-and-run base hit. Then Brooks scored
SWS' first run on an error on Sam Meck's bunt. One out later,
Brandon Cox hit a two-run single to right-center, and after Regan Hershey
reached on a fielder's choice and Matt Wright walked, Jared Horn socked
a 2-run double, giving SWS a 5-4 lead.
"They hit the ball hard
when they had to," Knosp said, "they had runners on the bases,
and I tell my team all the time, 'If you put the ball in play, things
will happen.'"
Michael Warfel made the score 6-4 with an
RBI single to right, and then SWS loaded the bases with back-to-back walks
before Andrew Bucher avoided further trouble by getting an inning-ending
pop out.
In the top of the fifth, Manheim seemed to have the makings
of a rally when Fry singled and stole second. But Brooks whiffed the next
three batters to escape the threat.
Then Brooks struck out the side
in the sixth, giving him six straight K's to end the game. Overall, he
finished with 11 strikeouts, while walking three and scattering six
hits.
"(Brooks) got a lot stronger (as the game went on),"
Knosp said. "When you have speed, and then you throw an off-speed
(once) in awhile ... our kids were having a little hard time catching up to
that fastball."
Still, it was a season to remember for the
Manheim VFW.
"When you get to a championship, I hate to see
anybody lose," Knosp said. "But unfortunately, somebody does have
to lose."
In the Midget-Midget semi-finals on Monday night,
Manheim erased a 3-0 deficit by erupting for 11 runs in the bottom of the
fourth inning, catapulting them to a 12-3 win over Mountville at Kunkle
Field.
Overall, Manheim sent 15 batters to the plate in that inning
and capitalized on seven hits, two walks, and a hit batter off of three
Mountville pitchers. Mountville's defense also committed three errors
in the fourth.
"It's pretty close (to our biggest inning of
the year), but I'm real proud of them," assistant head coach Jeff
Flanagan said.
They did it against an old nemesis in pitcher Zac
Getz, who earlier this season handed Manheim one its three losses. And on
Monday night, he picked up where he left off, retiring the first eight
batters he faced before No. 9 hitter Daniel Wiederecht broke through with a
base hit to right-center field.
"One of our three losses was to
(Getz), so they had that coming in and I didn't how that was going to
play out," Flanagan said. "Are they going to think, 'Oh no,
we've got him again,' or are they going to rebound. It took them
awhile, but they did it.
"... It started at the end of the
(third) inning with Daniel Weiderecht's base hit," he added.
"And I told the kids, 'It's contagious.' When one gets
that hit, they're going to start coming and it just took off from
there."
Ben Bomberger opened the fourth inning with a base hit
to left, and then he took second on an error and scored on Hunter
Pearson's RBI triple to right field. Pearson was cut down at the plate
on Kyle Winters' fielder's choice, but after Colin Fry reached on
an error, Blake Reiff (2-for-3) delivered an RBI single over the second
baseman's head and Damon Crouse cleared the bases with a two-run
triple.
Following JJ Sanchez's fielder's choice and and Josh
Flanagan's walk to load the bases, Weiderecht (2-for-2) worked a free
pass off reliever Matt Hartman to force in a run, and Bomberger was hit by
a pitch to plate another, making the score 6-3.
Pearson (2-for-4)
then greeted reliever Nelson Paredes with a two-run double just inside the
right field foul line, Fry drove in two more with a flare to right, and
Reiff completed the scoring with an RBI single to
left-center.
"It is contagious, especially when you have a
pitcher that everybody seems to be struggling with, who beat us once, and
you need someone to open that door and then everyone puts their foot in and
then it goes," Flanagan said.
Mountville, however, had the
momentum in the early going. They took a 2-0 lead in the second inning on
Josh Brubaker's RBI single to center field and Trevor Beaman's RBI
base hit to right field.
Then in the third, they added another run
on Hartman's (2-for-3) RBI single to center field, but Manheim pitcher
Kyle Winters stranded a runner at third base by striking out Brubaker to
end the inning. From there, Winters didn't allow another base hit the
rest of the game.
For the game, Winters tossed a complete-game five
hitter. He walked just one while striking out eight for the
victory.
"(Kyle) never gave in and I kept telling him, 'I
need strikes with attitude,'" Flanagan said. "Most of the
time, you try to get the kids to relax, smile and have a good time. And he
was focused. He missed his spots here and there, but they have some good
hitters who are going to take advantage of that. And they did. But he hung
in there, didn't give up and that what happens — you come out on
top."
Manheim scored its final run in the bottom of the fifth,
as Andrew Seiverling got on board with a fielder's choice and scored
when Pearson reached on a fielding error.
"I guess you could
say we haven't really put a full six-inning game together,"
Flanagan said. "They have their ups and downs, but they seem to battle
through it."
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