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Routt crumbles
Lady Rockets fall apart in 10-run 6th inning
SPRINGFIELD — There is nothing in the world whatsoever like the passion, the intensity and high drama of a first-round regional play-in game.
OK, kidding.
Still, watching ninth-seeded Routt Catholic and seventh-seed Springfield Lutheran claw and scrape at each other for five-and-a-half innings proved compelling enough. Rockets pitcher Megan Lawless bravely soldiered on with an injured, but heavily taped ankle, while Crusaders’ shortstop Andrea Beal spurred on her light-hitting squad with her bat, her speed and her defense.
It looked like the teams were headed for extra innings. Until Routt faltered, stumbled and then utterly collapsed — all in one tragicomic half-inning that resulted in a 12-2 win for the Lutherans.
Instead of going extra innings, the game, and Routt’s 4-16 season, ended on the 10-run mercy rule.
“Sometimes that’s what happens,” said Rockets’ first-year skipper Dave Mumford. “Once something goes wrong, it just snowballs.”
It would be more exciting to read about the game’s first five-and-a-half innings, which had produced a tight, 2-2 deadlock. But it was Lutheran’s 10-run sixth that decided things.
Lawless had allowed only three hits and two walks until then, having pitched four of the first five innings for Routt. Rachel Birdsell pitched a 1-2-3 second inning for the Rockets while Lawless, who’d rolled her ankle while trying to steal second in the top of the second, got her injury taped up. If not for a two-out, two-strike passed ball in the fourth, Lawless would have entered that sixth inning with a 2-1 lead. Would that have made a difference? Maybe.
But in the bottom of the sixth, Stephanie Patterson — one of the three girls in Lutheran’s lineup who batted over .200 for the season — knocked an infield single off Lawless’ shin, then quickly took second on a passed ball. The next hitter then singled to right (with Patterson stopping at third), then promptly stole second, putting two runners in scoring position, with nobody out, in a tie game.
Lawless got Stevie Taylor to hit a dribbler in front of the plate. Had she or catcher Amy Lawless reacted one second sooner, they’d have tagged out Patterson who came streaking in from third. But she slid in safely, breaking the tie, and there was still nobody out.
From that point on, Routt’s best-case scenarios kept getting worse. Katie Knepler, who had, like, four hits all year, spanked a solid single to right, driving in two more happy Crusaders: 5-2. Lawless then bore down, striking out the next two hitters in a row, but then Lutheran’s No. 9 batter singled, and then an infielder’s error loaded the bases, and then, all you-know-what broke loose.
Patterson, who’d started the inning, doubled in two more runs. Then Lawless hit a batter. Then an infielder made a throwing error, bringing in another couple runs. And then, the coup de grace: an outfielder muffed a fly ball, then picked the ball up and threw wildly to the infield. Two more runs came in. 12-2. Game over.
“All the way around, we tried to be aggressive and run,” said Lutheran skipper Moe Brockhouse, whose Crusaders improved to 4-14. “We’ve only had one other big inning like this. We scored seven in one inning to beat Tri-City this season, but that was a lot of walks. Tonight, the girls came with their hitting shoes on for a change.”
Routt had been playing well lately, and probably deserved a better finish than it got. Indeed, when the Rockets strung together four straight hits in the fourth inning (starting with a Kelsie Perkins double) to take a 2-1 lead, it even looked like Routt was the better team. Megan Lawless and Birdsell drove in the runs. And on the mound, Lawless looked more than formidable enough for Lutheran, piling up seven strikeouts in four innings pitched, before that terrible sixth.
“The Routt pitcher was fantastic,” said Brockhouse. “I couldn’t believe it when she came back into the game with the tape on her ankle. She pitched a whale of a game, but I think we wore her down in that sixth inning.”
Mumford had to agree.
“The injury to our pitcher, it probably didn’t affect the whole outcome of the game, but I’m sure it took some of the steam off her ball,” Mumford said. But give Lutheran some credit. They hit the ball really well that inning.”
Today in Edinburg, Lutheran will face top-seeded Virginia/A-C Central, which beat the Crusaders down, 10-0, only a week ago. This time around, Brockhouse is throwing Beal, his best athlete, at the Redbirds. It was Cassie Payne, Monday’s winner, who took the loss against Virginia/A-C last week.
“They’ve got an outstanding team and they’ve put together a great year,” said Brockhouse of Virginia/A-C. “They’ve got some really big bats.
They’re gonna be tough. But Beal throws a bit faster, so hopefully, that will make a difference.”
A “spark plug” in every sense of the word, Beal was superb in Monday’s 12-2 win over Routt. She reached base in all four of her at-bats (twice by infield hit, twice by infield error), stole three bases and scored twice. She also made a few nice defensive plays from her shortstop position.
Routt will put away its equipment and look toward a hopefully brighter 2009 season.
“Up till today, the girls had been playing very well,” Mumford said. “Nobody gave us a chance to win a ball game coming into this year. We had a lot of girls help us out this year who didn’t have a lot of experience. It’s been a tough year for all of us.”
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