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Poland comeback forces game to be finished today
By Gary Housteau
BOARDMAN
Poland has to feel like it’s playing with house money after trailing 15-10 with darkness setting in for the bottom of the sixth inning at the Little League Junior League State Tournament at Fields of dreams.
By the time Poland was finished batting, you could hardly see in front of you and the locals had scored five runs to tie the game at 15 against East Holmes and extend the winners bracket championship contest into the seventh inning at 6 p.m. today.
And to take it even one step further, Poland had the potential winning run just 90 feet away with the proverbial daylight clock about to run out when Jarret Shurilla grounded out unassisted to first to end the inning. Home-plate umpire Pat Miller immediately called for both managers for a quick conference and the game was suspended.
According to a tournament official in the press box, if the game was called for darkness at any point after 4 Ω innings, it would revert back to the last completed inning if the home team, Poland, hadn’t completed its at bat. East Holmes led 11-10 after five complete innings before they tacked on four runs in the top of the sixth.
But for as bad as the top of the sixth inning and most of the contest went for Poland, who the locals had a near-miraculous at-bat in the bottom of the sixth.
Zachary Yaskulka lined a bases-loaded double to tie the contest at 15 with one out and when a balk sent him to third, Poland had a chance to finish the game and get the victory.
“I am proud that they battled back because I just told them that it was going to revert back to the fifth inning and we would have lost by one,” said Poland manager John Shurilla. “I didn’t think it would go this far because of the darkness to be honest with you, but it started late (6:27 p.m.) so that put us in the backup right there. I requested cleaner balls to give my batters a little bit better eye. I was having trouble on third base seeing.
”But I wasn’t happy that we had to get this far, I really wasn’t. Every time we battled back to get within one, we’d go ahead and we’d give them back two, we’d give them back three. It was catch-up from the beginning.”
Poland, which had 13 hits, was its own worst enemy as the offense left the bases loaded twice and stranded nine runners. The defense committed nine errors.
“Our defense let us down the whole game,” Shurilla said. “Our pitchers were pitching their hearts out and this defense let us down. I think there was probably as many errors as they had runs on the board and that is not our team.”
East Holmes led led 6-1 in the top of the third, 9-5 in the top of the fourth and 11-8 in the top of the fifth. East Holmes had 11 hits, five errors and left 10 runners on base.
“It was disappointing. Errors killed us. We had it there at the end,” said East Holmes coach Everett Troyer. “So hats off to them. Tey did what they had to do.”
Troyer said he wasn’t trying to extend the game purposely. But he did have to make a pitching change in the sixth inning with the score 15-12 and it didn’t seem like there would be enough daylight left for Poland to finish its rally.
“It got dark fast. It was just too bad. Again it was the errors,” Troyer said. “We were up [five runs] but we couldn’t close the door. But man, they’ve got some kids that could hit the ball and they hit some shots that we couldn’t defend. But again it goes back to the fundamental things. If you don’t capitalize on fundamentals, things like tonight happen.”
So Poland has new life and will play at the least one full inning for the winner’s bracket title.
“We just have to go ahead and regroup, come back tomorrow ready to play and just put everything on the line,” Shurilla said. “But we’ve got to play better defense. I think we’ll come out and hit but defense is the key. There’s nothing else I can say about that.”