By Andy Amey
VINCENNES — What looked at first like a rout became a little tense in the middle innings Saturday at Vincennes, but Wayne Newton Post 346 held off Vincennes Post 73 by a 5-2 score to move into today’s championship round of American Legion baseball sectional play.
Today’s game begins at noon, incidentally, an hour earlier than is usually the case. Greene County Post 196 and St. Bernice Post 108 played Saturday’s second game for the right to face Vincennes in the late game to determine Post 346’s opponent.
Post 346 played like the tournament favorite it is early Saturday, using doubles by Dougie Collett and Jacob Hayes to score four times in the first two innings.
Jacob Hayes led off the bottom of the first with a single, continued to second when the ball was fumbled in right field and came around to score on a wild pitch and a passed ball.
The passed ball was the fourth ball to A.J. Reed, who got to third on the next pitch when Collett ripped a screaming line drive that threatened to knock a hole in the left-field fence. “That one was a decent hit,” Collett admitted after the game, and both he and Reed scored when Zac Niehaus singled to right field.
Andrew Gauer singled with one out in the second, went to third when Jacob Hayes doubled just inside the bag at third base (after nearly doubling down the right-field line on the previous pitch) and scored on Michael Eberle’s grounder.
“It’s always good to get the leadoff man on base at the beginning of the game,” Jacob Hayes said afterward. “We’d faced [Garrett Schirmacher of Vincennes] last year, so we kind of knew what we were up against … with three [runs] in the first inning, we thought we were in good shape.”
“I thought the way we started out we were going to score a lot of runs,” agreed manager John Hayes, Jacob’s uncle.
With Reed on the mound, those four runs looked like plenty. But Post 346’s 16-year-old left-handed ace wasn’t his usual dominant self on Saturday — although a three-hitter plus nine strikeouts in eight innings doesn’t look much like a struggle on paper — and Schirmacher suddenly turned into an approximation of Jamie Moyer.
Vincennes chipped away at the lead in the third inning on a double by Isaac Salters and an RBI single by Matt Sievers — the first two hits off Reed — and added an unearned run in the fifth on two errors, a stolen base and Post 346’s inability to turn a double play on a slow roller. Schirmacher, in the meantime, was in the middle of a string of 10 straight batters retired.
“[Schirmacher] started getting [his curveball] to break a little sharper,” Jacob Hayes explained. “He struck me out on a knuckleball — or a splitter or something like that — in the dirt. As soon as he got on top of his curveball, he was able to perform a little better.”
“Toward the second half [of the game] he started definitely picking up his curveball and his off-speed pitches,” Collett agreed. “Everybody [hitting] was out in front, ahead of the ball.”
Reed helped himself in the bottom of the fifth with a two-out double down the left-field line, and that blossomed into a very big insurance run when the Vincennes third baseman threw away Collett’s grounder to let Reed score.
Wayne Newton failed to pad its lead any more, wasting a first-and-third, one-out situation in the eighth after a double by Shawn Walker and a single by Nick Pilipovich — just the second and third hits off Schirmacher since the second inning.
“Give credit to Schirmacher. He pitched a real nice game,” John Hayes said afterward.
But although Reed’s pitch count had climbed perilously high, he got through the sixth, seventh and eighth innings allowing just one baserunner — and picked that one off first base. Wade Bush recorded a pair of strikeouts in a ninth-inning save.
“A.J. didn’t have his best stuff, but he hadn’t pitched in two weeks [because of ill-timed rainouts],” John Hayes said after the game. “All he’s had in that time has been some bullpen work, and that’s just not the same.”
“He threw well for the most part,” said Collett, Reed’s batterymate. “He hung in there and did fine.”
There’s no pressure on the Post 346 players in today’s game — or games, if necessary — nor will there be any if they advance to the regional at Princeton that begins Friday. But that’s not how they are looking at it.
“[Post 346] has only lost one [sectional] the whole time John’s coached, and we wouldn’t want to be the second team [to lose],” Jacob Hayes explained. “And we don’t want to be in that tournament [the state finals, hosted by Wayne Newton beginning July 31] just because we have an automatic bid.”
Wayne Newton 5, Vincennes 2
Vincennes ab r h bi W.Newton ab r h bi
Schirmacher p 4 1 1 0 Hayes ss 4 1 2 0
Small ss 3 0 0 0 Eberle 3b 4 0 0 1
Salters rf 3 1 1 1 Reed p 2 2 1 0
Sievers 1b 4 0 1 1 Bush p 0 0 0 0
Halter c 2 0 0 0 Collett c 4 1 1 0
Lane c 2 0 0 0 Niehaus 2b 4 0 1 2
Jerrell 3b 3 0 0 0 Walker rf 3 0 1 0
Robinson lf 2 0 0 0 Pilipovich 1b 3 0 1 0
Marchino lf 2 0 0 0 Luken lf 4 0 0 0
Potter 2b 1 0 0 0 Gauer cf 4 1 1 0
Self 2b 2 0 0 0
Purcell cf 3 0 0 0
Totals 31 2 3 2 Totals 32 5 8 3
Vincennes Post 73 001 010 000 — 2
Wayne Newton Post 346 310 010 00x — 5
E — Salters, Niehaus, Reed, Jerrell, Collett, Hayes. LOB — Vincennes 6, WN 7. 2B — Collett, Hayes, Salters, Reed, Walker. SB — Schirmacher, Pilipovich. CS — Schirmacher. SH — Pilipovich.
IP H R ER BB SO
Vincennes Post 73
Schirmacher (L, 0-3) 8 8 5 4 3 11
Wayne Newton Post 346
Reed (W, 4-1) 8 3 2 1 3 9
Bush (Sv 3) 1 0 0 0 0 2
WP — Schirmacher 3. PB — Halter, Collett. HBP — by Reed (Potter). T — 2:07.
Next — Wayne Newton Post 346 (24-9) plays at noon today in the championship round. Vincennes Post 73 (8-15) played in an elimination game late Saturday night.
