The sound a baseball makes pinging off of a piece of metal is a unique sound, especially in MINK League ball where wooden bats are used.
Saturday night, that distinctive ringing tolled defeat to the Jefferson City Renegades, as a couple of bad breaks resulted in a 3-1 loss to the Sedalia Bombers.
In the bottom of the seventh inning, down two runs, Tyler Cunningham waited at third base. He had reached on a single, and moved up twice on a fielder's choice and a passed ball. With two outs, he watched as Sedalia's Evan Dodd threw home, saw the ball go through the legs of catcher Andrew Brooks, and exploded toward home plate.
Had Dodd thrown something with movement, Cunningham would have been safe. But the ball's straight course sent it back off the netting pole directly behind home plate, over Brooks's head and onto the grass in front of home, where Dodd gloved it and scooped it to his catcher.
Jefferson City head coach Mike DeMilia was ejected for arguing the call, and in the end it stood: inning over.
"He (the umpire) said he blocked the plate," DeMilia said. "I obviously didn't think so, so that's the way it is."
That call was one of the decisive moments in a very close game that saw both starting pitchers - Taylor Thompson for the Renegades and the lefty Dodd for Sedalia - throw at least eight innings and 100 pitches.
The Bombers were lucky where Jefferson City was unlucky, scoring one of their two seventh-inning runs on a wild pitch and a passed ball.
Thompson's final line: three earned runs on six hits and six strikeouts with a single walk in 8 innings. He was undone by a solo home run in the fifth, and back-to-back hits and minor control issues in the seventh.
"I'm proud. I'm not proud of how it ended, but I'm proud of how I did," Thompson said, smiling.
He said he was unsure if he should stay in the game after allowing a leadoff walk in the ninth, but asked to stay in to go for the complete game. Thompson got a flyout to center fielder Mike Million, but a walk and a single loaded the bases and the Renegades went to Luke Hampton, who struck out Sedalia's six- and seven-hole hitters on seven pitches. It was Hampton's debut for the team.
"Usually (the coaches) have trust in us and they know we know our bodies better," Thompson said. "From a competitive standpoint, no one ever wants to come out, so I kind of told them 'I wanna finish it,' but at the end, kind of came up short."
The right-hander made the most of just one run of support a night after Jefferson City plated nine against Ozark. Credit Dodd, who threw eight innings of one-run ball and struck out seven on five hits and a walk.
That one run for the home team came from Million's bat, who, after hitting one home run in Jefferson City's first 19 games suddenly finds himself leading the team with four home runs.
Million credited his surge to an abundance of good news in his family he is trying to match.
"Just some more inspiration," he said. "My family's been doing a lot of stuff. My little brother just got an internship at Dell, and he's only 19, so I'm just trying to do better things and greater things, and make everybody proud like they are.
"So, going out here and just giving a little more, maybe 150 percent. I'm going crazy right now, and I'm just enjoying it."
Jefferson City continues its homestand at 7 p.m. tonight against the St. Joseph Mustangs.