It didn’t look very good for the Bellwood-Antis baseball team in their season opener against the Philipsburg-Osceola Mounties Monday afternoon at Bellwood’s Stadium Drive Baseball Field. Philipsburg had just taken advantage of four walks and five errors to build a 7-0 lead. Early talk of hoping to be competitive by B-A coaches Steve Conlon and Tim Weiand seemed to be fleeing at a high rate of fuel consumption.
B-A sophomore Troy Brunner had tossed a scoreless third inning in relief of Blue Devil junior starter Chris Alley, but allowed a lead-off home run to Mountie catcher Matt Adams to increase the P-O advantage to 3-0.
Alley hadn’t pitched that bad, giving up two runs, one earned in two innings, but had been wild, walking four batters.
Brunner seemed to settle down following Adams shot, retiring the next two batters, but then two errors and four hits quickly swelled the Philipsburg lead to 7-0 with the Mounties batting around in the inning.
Bellwood-Antis came in for their turn at bat in the fourth. Instead of rolling over, the Blue Devils returned the favor sending a dozen batters to the plate to narrow the score to 7-6.
Tyler McClellan singled to began the frame, Shawn Weiand walked and Matt Albright singled in McClellan to put the Blue Devils on the scoreboard. Brunner helped himself with an RBI single driving home Weiand. After Chris Alley lined out to third, just missing a base hit, Nick Treese drew a walk and L. J. Seidel drove in Albright with a fielders choice on which P-O couldn’t record an out. With the bases loaded, Ryan Rhoades worked a walk to force home Brunner. Andy Brisbin got Treese to the plate with a groundout and Seidel scored the sixth tally of the inning when Philipsburg committed their only error of the game on a grounder by Weiand.
Bolstered by the big inning offensively, the Blue Devils played the rest of the game without an error and Brunner allowed just one more run to minimize the danger over the final three innings.
Brunner picked up the win going five innings, striking out four and walking one, scattering 10 hits, giving up six runs, two earned.
Bellwood-Antis only scored in two innings, but managed to get enough for the win with six in the fourth and four more two innings later.
McClellan, who started both innings, opened the sixth inning with a base on balls, Albright delivered a one-out single to left and Chris Alley a key two-out bingle that fell in front of the right fielder who lost the ball in the sun to score McClellan with the tying run. Treese followed by belting a one-strike, two-ball pitch over the center field fence to score everybody and put the Blue Devils ahead 10-8.
Philipsburg-Osceola tried to come back in the seventh, getting an infield single by Adam White, who had four hits and a walk in five trips to the plate and a walk to Jeremy potter. With two out however, Treese who had given his team the lead, ended the game corralling a hard shot and touching third base for the game-ending force out.
“Being down, the kids battled back big, “ said second year head coach Steve Conlon. “They came back twice in this game. Having Nick Treese hit the big home run, I don’t know that he has ever hit a home run in his career, stepping up and hitting a home run like that was huge for us. Overall, except for some defensive errors, Troy Brunner pitched a great game and the hitting was there from top to bottom of our lineup.”
Bellwood-Antis will have no time to celebrate their season-opening win. The Blue Devils are back on the diamond today. In an effort to beat the weather forecast for the remainder of the week, the baseball game with Glendale has been moved up a day from Wednesday and will be played today at 4 p.m. at Glendale.
Bellwood-Antis 10 Philipsburg-Osceola 8
PHILIPSBURG-OSCEOLA – White, cf, 4-1-4; Potter, p-3b, 3-2-0; Heeman, rf-p, 5-1-1; Mostyn, ss, 4-1-2; Good, 1b, 3-0-1; Adams, c, 4-1-2; Emigh, cr 0-0-0; Conoway, 2b, 0-0-0; Gray, lf, 0-0-0; Marcinko, dh-p, 3-1-0; Wasilko, lf, 2-0-0; Davis, cr-rf, 1-0-0; Beals, 3b, 1-0-0; Winter, p-2b, 3-1-2. TOTALS 33-8-12.
BELLWOOD-ANTIS – Brisbin, 2b, 4-0-0; McClellan, 1b, 2-2-1; Weiand, c, 3-1-1; DeArmitt, cf, 0-0-0; Albright, dh, 4-2-2; Brunner, lf-p, 4-1-1; Alley, p-ss, 4-1-2; Treese, 3b, 3-2-2; Seidel, rf, 4-1-1; Rhoades, ss-lf, 2-0-0; Kelley, lf, 1-0-0. TOTALS 31-10-10.
Philipsburg-Osceola 110 501 0 8-12-1.
Bellwood-Antis 000 604 X 10-10-5.
3B: PO-Mostyn 1.
HR:PO-Adams 1, BA-Treese 1.
RBI: PO- Good 2, Heeman 1, Mostyn 1, Adams 1, BA- Treese 3, Brisbin 1, Albright 1, Brunner 1, Alley 1, Seidel 1, Rhoades 1.
K: PO- Potter 4, Winter 1, Marcinko 1, Heeman 1, BA- Brunner 4.
BB: PO- Winter 3, Marcinko 1, Heeman 1, BA- Alley 4, Brunner 1.
WP: Brunner LP: Heeman.
