BLACKSOX MAKE A RUN, FALTER IN THE END

Jake Weier has spent 16 seasons playing on Freeman’s amateur baseball team, the Blacksox, and eight of those seasons have also been spent as manager. And this season, he says, has been among the most fun of all of them.

Perhaps that’s what makes last week’s brutal ending so tough to stomach. Facing perennial powerhouse Dell Rapids in the second round of the Class B State Amateur Baseball Tournament at Brandon’s beautiful ballpark Wednesday night, Aug. 13, the Blacksox gave up a 10-5 lead in the ninth inning and then offered up another five runs in the 10th inning to suffer a staggering 15-10 elimination loss.

Losing sucks — there’s no way around it,” said Weier. “I mean, we had ’em. The opportunity was there, we just couldn’t put it away, and then the ball really started bouncing their way. It wasn’t in the cards.”

It sure looked like it was for the lion’s share of the game.

Starting pitcher Jackson Fiegen, cleanup man Bailey Sage and the Blacksox shrugged off a rough start that saw Fiegen walked the bases loaded before giving up a pair of runs in the top of the first inning — and it didn’t take them long.

The Blacksox benefited from a pair of leadoff walks out of the gate thanks to Sage, who connected for a three-run home run to left center field that put Freeman on top in terms of both momentum and score.

“I was on base when Bailey hit that bomb,” said Weier. “It was a rocket — a no-doubter.”

Then, two innings later, Trey Ortman singled on a line drive to center field that scored Weier and Avary Mellman, giving Freeman a 5-2 lead against a 14-7 team that few saw losing to the 9-8 Blacksox.

“They’ve been one of the favorites to win it every year for a lot of years — and they have won it,” said Weier. “But we got on them right away. I think everybody thought going in, ‘Yeah, we’re going to see a good pitcher; we might not be able to hit the ball quite like we normally do,’ but we ended up with 15 hits in the game. You really can’t ask for anything more out of our bats.”

Indeed, even as the Mudcats worked through a series of fresh arms and strong pitchers and tied the game at 5-5 in the top of the seventh inning, the Blacksox kept pounding away, scoring three more in their own half of the seventh and another two in the eighth to take a 10-5 lead.

“Ten runs should be enough to win a ball game,” said Weier.

But Dell Rapids — down to its last three outs — got hot when it mattered most. Back-to-back singles followed by a blast over the right field wall started the inning and made it 10-8, and the Mudcats scored their ninth and 10th runs of the game with two outs to tie up at 10.

All told, the top of the ninth inning saw two walks and a run-scoring wild pitch from the Blacksox and three singles and that momentum-changing three-run home run from the Mudcats.

Freeman’s top of the lineup went down in order in the bottom of the ninth and Dell Rapids poured it on in the 10th with a double, triple and two singles, and also benefited from back-to-back Blacksox errors. Just like that it was 15-10 in favor of the favorites, and Freeman had nothing left to give.

“Ten runs should be enough to win a ball game,” Weier said. “But we left 12 guys on base. We were getting them on, we just weren’t getting them in.”

“We had one of the better teams in the state on the ropes,” he continued. “You can’t ask for a whole lot more than that.”

Dell Rapids went on to suffer a 4-3 quarterfinal loss to Hartford-Humboldt, which then advanced through the semifinals before losing the state championship game 10-8 to the Parkston Devil Rays.

As for Freeman’s final game of the season, it saw a packed box score.

Two games after delivering 164 pitches in a complete-game district tournament win over Irene that sent the Blacksox to state, Fiegen turned in another strong effort on the mound, throwing 132 pitches and giving up six hits while striking out seven over 6 2/3 innings.

Mellman and Evan Scharberg both threw 1 1/3 innings in relief and Bryce Satter, a Post 152 American Legion player, recorded the final two outs of the game.

Weier, Mellman and Fiegen all had three singles and Sage picked up a single to go along with his three-run home run. Ortman finished with three RBI, Scharberg had two and Fiegen added another.

Both Freeman and Dell Rapids had 15 hits and three errors.

‘Everybody cared’

Weier admitted he wasn’t wild about taking over the managerial reins from Brett Scherschligt eight years ago but soon settled in as Sox’s skipper. And this summer has been worth the grind.

“I haven’t had that much fun playing baseball in a long time,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of guys, but the guys who showed up to the ballpark wanted to be there — and it showed. At the end of the day, everybody cared and wanted to get better. That’s what makes it fun.”

This year’s team included a half-dozen American Legion players with the Post 152 79ers who helped round out a team that, otherwise, might have had a hard time coming up with nine guys on any given night.

“It’s nice having some guys coming out of our farm system,” said Weier. “It’s been a while.”

And not only did those 17-, 18- and 19-year-olds supply bodies, they provided pop.

“Those kids are awesome — just a big spark to our lineup,” he said. “Their speed, their bats; they can flat out play.”

And with more Legion players in the pipeline — age 16 is the minimum for amateur baseball — the future looks bright.

“I hope they all stick around and want to keep playing baseball,” Weier said, “because we’d sure like to have them.”