By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Last spring, the Webb City baseball team beat Glendale by a dozen runs in the regular season and then suffered a 2-0 loss to the Falcons in the district championship.
It was a topic of discussion for the Cardinals this week as they entered Wednesday’s Class 5 District 7 championship against Carl Junction, a team they beat by 15 in the earlier meeting.
“We lost to Glendale 2-0 in districts and that stung because we beat them pretty handily during the regular season,” head coach Flave Darnell said. “But we know playoff baseball is a different feel.”
Darnell said he wanted Webb City to hold Carl Junction scoreless in the first inning and get some early runs of its own. The Cardinals did just that, scoring three times in the first inning and rolling to a 12-1 win in five innings at Neosho.
“It’s just great,” Darnell said. “We’ve had our ups and downs during the year, we talked about it a lot. We played a lot of really good people this year. We always want to be as good as we can in May and we played really good in this tournament. Giving up one run in three games, you’re going to win a lot of games doing that.”
Webb City, 19-15, advances to the quarterfinal round on May 28.
The three-run first got things going for the Cardinals, but the big blow came in a six-run third and they struck for three more in the fourth to force the run rule.
Webb City wasted little time getting started – Eric Fitch and Cy Darnell led off with line-drive singles on the first pitches they saw, Cade Wilson moved them over on a bunt and then Kenley Hood walked to load the bases for William Hayes, who lined a single to left to score one. Jeremiah Leaming followed with a hard single off the pitcher that rolled into right field and scored two more.
“Eric and Cy have been great table setters for us all year and when they go we score runs and they went today so that was good to see,” Darnell said.
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Fitch finished 2-for-4 with a single and a double and two runs scored, and Darnell added two singles and a run.
The Cardinals batted 11 in the bottom of the third. Leaming drove in one on a single to right, Aiden Brock drove in another with a bloop single past second, and Kaylor Darnell scored another on a groundout.
Fitch scored two with his double to left, and Cy Darnell followed with his second single to make it 9-1.
Then, in the fourth, Brock singled up the middle to score two after Hayes singled and Leaming was hit by a pitch. A sacrifice fly by Mcquade Eilenstein to deep left made it 12-1.
Carl Junction, meanwhile, was always looking for a timely hit. The Bulldogs put runners on base in every inning but stranded eight in the game, including two in each of the first three innings. Their lone run came on a double by Drew Massey in the top of the third to score Jordan Woodruff, who doubled off the left field wall.
Carl Junction managed five hits, but also walked four times. Webb City recorded 14 hits. In addition to multi-hit games from Fitch and Cy Darnell, Hayes went 3-for-3 with two runs, Leaming was 2-for-2 with two runs, a double and was hit by a pitch, and Brock singled twice and scored two runs.
Webb City starting pitcher Cooper Crouch pitched the first four innings and struck out three. Walker Sweet closed out the fifth and struck out one.
“They’re a really good team and they were fortunate to have a lot of good pitching left,” said Carl Junction coach Jake Stevenson. “We knew we were going to be in a battle offensively. Kind of the mindset was we were going to have to small ball a little bit, going to have to come up with a timely hit and play really good on defense and allow for some things to happen.”
The Bulldogs, 13-17, were the fourth seed in the district and advanced to the title game with a 5-4 win over top seed McDonald County on Monday. Webb City was the two seed and shut out Grandview 16-0 and Neosho 2-0.
