The Calvary Lutheran Lions trailed by three runs and they were down to their final three outs Friday against the Belle Tigers.
As it turns out, no outs were necessary in the bottom of the seventh.
Calvary Lutheran rallied for four runs -- without recording an out -- in the bottom of the seventh to stun Belle for a 9-8 walk-off victory at Calvary Lutheran to split a doubleheader.
Jonathan Lieb started out the bottom half of the seventh with a single up the middle and was advanced to third on a double into right-center field by Jesse Jorgensen. Lieb scored on a bloop single by Ben Hardin to make it an 8-6 game with runners on first and second with still nobody out.
The Tigers made a crucial mistake when the next batter, Alex Procter, grounded a ball to the pitcher Isaiah Sullinger.
Sullinger scooped up the groundball and tried to start a double play by throwing to second base. The throw was wild and found its way into center field, scoring Jorgensen from second and leaving the tying run on third and the winning run on second for Logan Meers. Meers grounded a 2-2 pitch up the middle that allowed both runners to score and gave the Lions the walk-off victory.
“I was trying to hit anything close,” Meers said. “2-2 count, I was just trying to swing at anything near the plate and that is what I did. It was a little high, but I got to it perfectly. It did not feel bad, it certainly felt good. I told myself to act like I’d been there before and that is what I did.”
Belle jumped out to an early 4-0 lead in the top of the first on two hits, two hit batters, an error and an RBI groundout off starting pitcher Lieb on the mound. Lieb would settle in after a shaky first inning.
He held the Tigers off the scoreboard for the next four innings, buying his team time to get back into the game.
“Jonathan struggled a little bit, he didn’t pitch his best game, but he kept us in it,” Calvary Lutheran coach Rusty Bourg said. “… We stuck with him. We feel like if Jonathan is in the game, we have a chance.”
That is exactly what the Lions did in the bottom of the third.
Lieb started the rally with a one-out double and came around to score after a ball got misplayed in left field and Procter followed with an RBI double to cut the deficit down to 4-2. But it was Meers who came up with the big hit when he caught a fastball and drove it over the fence in left-center field for a three-run home run to give Calvary Lutheran a 5-4 lead.
“He got that home run up in the jet stream and it just kept going,” Bourg said. “That was huge. You could tell from the body language in the dugout that we were walking around with our shoulders and our heads down. After that home run we thought, ‘Hey, we can win this. We are in this.’”
Belle was able to get the lead back in the top of the sixth on three hits and two walks to take the 6-5 advantage. The Tigers would add two more runs in the top of the seventh off Procter in relief to set up the dramatic comeback.
“When we were down four, I thought, ‘Boy, we got our work cut out for us,’” Bourg said. “To their credit, they got it done.”
Meers led the way for the Lions by going 3-for-4 with five RBI, while Hardin added three hits and an RBI with Lieb, Jorgensen and Procter all finishing with two hits.
Sullinger pitched a complete game in the losing effort for Belle (4-5).
In Game 1 against the Lone Jack Mules, the Lions carried a 4-3 lead into the fifth inning but gave up 10 runs in the final three innings to lose 13-4.
The Mules (13-3), who are receiving votes in the Class 3 rankings, struck for three runs in the fifth, four in the sixth and three more in the top of the seventh.
“We made an error here, a walk there and then another error there and the next thing you know they got four runs,” Bourg said. “It is just one of those things, I guess.”
Calvary Lutheran (4-4) will look to carry the momentum from the walk-off victory into its next game Tuesday at home against New Bloomfield. First pitch is at 4:30 p.m.