FORTVILLE — Mt. Vernon baseball coach Brad King summed up the Marauders’ first Hoosier Heritage Conference loss of the season with one word.
Errors.
The previous front runners of the division committed six on Tuesday night, falling to rival Shelbyville 13-11.
Those errors overshadowed what was an impressive night at the plate from both teams that combined for 26 hits and 24 runs. King was disappointed to see his players make so many mistakes, but said the night’s defensive performance isn’t a trend.
“This is the first time we’ve had this poor of a game defensively,” King said. “This is an anomaly; this is a situation where we just came out and didn’t field the ball well today. If you look at our other games, we’ve fielded it really well. Today, we had some guys get greedy and try to make a play, but it wasn’t a lack of effort.”
In spite of the errors, the Mt. Vernon (6-2, 2-1 HHC) scraped and clawed their way back into the ballgame multiple times.
After trailing three runs from the get-go, the Marauders responded with three of their own in the bottom half of the first frame. They allowed another eight over the third and fourth innings, but battled back to score seven to make it a one-run game.
Playing from behind has been a bit of calling card for Mt. Vernon, especially in conference play. Against Delta last week, the Marauders fell behind early in both games before their bats woke up and carried them to victory.
King said he’d rather not start games off trying to catch teams from the jump, but admires the way his players continue to show some fight.
“This group will never quit,” King said. “We lost a lot of times, but we kept putting ourselves in a position to win. We’ve got two losses now, and in both losses, we had an opportunity to win.”
Knotted up at 11-all in the seventh inning, Shelbyville (5-2, 2-1 HHC) knocked in two runs to force Mt. Vernon to fight back one more time.
And they just about pulled it off thanks to senior Joel Walton.
Prior to coming to the plate, Walton had already hit two, opposite field home runs, a double and drove in five runs.
After AJ Swingle got on base, Walton walked up as the tying run. No stranger to what was coming, Walton took a pitch away and drove it into right field where it dropped perfectly fair, right in front of the right-field line to reach base.
Unfortunately for the Marauders, he would be the last person to reach base as Nate Weaver struck out swinging to end the game.
Walton finished the day 4-for-5 with two homers, a double, a single and five runs batted in.
For King, that last at bat embodied the Marauders’ unwillingness to concede.
“He knew they were giving him certain pitches and he went with it,” King said. “The fact that he hit two home runs, opposite field, is great. But his last at bat, he has a great approach and he puts us in a position to win or at least tie the game.”
The top of the order had a solid day at the plate for Mt. Vernon. Landon Clark punched three hits, one of them a double, while Jake Stank went 2-for-5 with a double, an RBI and a stolen base. Hunter Dobbins struck out for the first time this season, but the senior catcher still went 2 of 3 with two doubles and two RBI.
Overall, the Marauders had 14 hits, 11 RBI, eight extra base hits, but left 10 stranded.
They’ll head to Shelbyville tonight to complete the conference series with the Golden Bears. First pitch is set for 5:30 p.m.
