(March 4, 2022) The Lamar Cardinals took the field to a raucous home crowd at Vincent-Beck Stadium on a chilly Friday night against Mount St. Mary. The crowd had much to cheer about as the Cardinals took a commanding lead in the early innings, but soon found themselves on the edge of their seat in a white-knuckle thriller as The Mount came roaring back late.
The game started off in disastrous fashion for the Cards when starting pitcher Braxton Douthit over threw first base on a slow roller back to the mound against The Mounts lead-off hitter allowing the runner to reach second on the error. Things quickly compounded as a single and a fielder’s choice brought the runner around to score to put the mount up 1-0 in the top of the first inning.
Things looked even more dire when Lamar came to the plate and went three up and three down on three straight pop outs. However, the Cards bats did not stay cold for long. Rising star DH Josh Blankenship, continued his impressive season by leading off the bottom of the second with a sizzling double into the gap then advancing to third on a wild pitch. Kelby Weyler then tied up the score 1-1 with a fielder’s choice to Shortstop. The very next at bat Mathew McDonald laced yet another double and was the driven in by a triple off the bat of Deric Lamontagne, just barely avoiding the tag at home. Cardinals now lead 2-1.
Douthit settled in after his rocky start breezing through four straight shut-out innings as the offense continued to pump out runs behind him. By the bottom of the fourth the Cardinal’s had taken a commanding 5-1 lead following a towering homerun to left field off the bat of catcher Kyle Harper, his first of the year.
After putting together five strong innings on the mound, Douthit entered the top of the sixth with a pitch count nearing a 100. The inning began easy enough with Douthit making a spectacular play off the mound to secure the first out. After this initial out though, Douthit began to show some clear signs of fatigue. As he struggled to locate his pitches, The Mount jumped on the opportunity with their next three batters hitting a triple, a single, and a double consecutively. Shrinking the lead to 5-2 with a runner in scoring position and only one out. This forced head coach Will Davis to make a pitching change, Douthit exited a game the where stats will not reflect how dominant he was for most of he night. Going 5.1 innings pitched, 6 strikeouts, 6 hits, 4 runs, but only 1 earned.
After making the switch, Lamar’s relief pitchers seemed to struggle in the fifth as well with two more runs scoring and one more pitching change the lead had shrunk to just one run with Lamar leading 5-4 at the end of the inning.
Tensions further mounted as each team kept each other off of the board going into the eighth. Lamar called in their closer Jack Dallas in hopes of him getting a rare two inning save. Their prayers were answered as Dallas was nails as soon as he stepped on the rubber. He had four, yes you read that right, strikeouts in the eighth and after Lamar couldn’t score in the bottom of the inning he came back in the top of the 9th and shut down Mount St. Mary for the final time clinching it for the Cardinals, and getting his first save of the season. Lamar survives the rally and wins 5-1.
