FORTVILLE — With the game tied, the bases loaded and an outright Hoosier Heritage Conference championship on the line, Mt. Vernon head coach Brad King admittedly broke out into a mild sweat.
Marauders’ senior Hunter Dobbins recalls watching from the dugout with a calm confidence alongside his teammates.
Fellow senior Joel Walton knew the Marauders had the right guy in the right situation the entire time.
All it took was a gamble, and Mt. Vernon sophomore Eli Bridenthal rolled the dice as the Marauders stood deadlocked 4-4 with the visiting Yorktown Tigers in the bottom of the seventh during their HHC two-game series finale.
Mt. Vernon (19-6, 12-2 HHC) needed a sweep of the Tigers (13-10, 7-7 HHC) on Wednesday night to seize the program’s first outright HHC championship, and the pressure was applied after news broke that rival Greenfield-Central (15-7, 11-3 HHC) wrapped up its HHC series with a 4-0 win over Shelbyville.
A loss for Mt. Vernon meant a shared crown with the G-C Cougars, but that wasn’t going to cut it for the Marauders, who were in position to dictate their own destiny.
All Bridenthal needed was the green light.
Marauders win! Beat Yorktown 5-4 for first outright @HHCConference baseball title in school history. @GDRsports @mvmarauders pic.twitter.com/fLCaioTL39
— Rich Torres (@RichTorres23) May 20, 2021
“When he was standing on third base, there at the end, I said, ‘If the ball gets away from the catcher any amount, I want you to go,'” King said. “Now, I was kind of hoping it would be a little further than that, but it worked.”
With Mt. Vernon’s Gavin Sullivan facing an 0-2 count at the plate, Yorktown reliever Garrett Thurman pounded a pitch into the dirt that bounced away from catcher Justin Wales and towards the mound.
Bridenthal never hesitated.
“Eli probably shouldn’t have gone, but he did,” Walton smiled. “We’ve had races where we we’ve raced for the fastest person, and he’s always won, so he knew his speed and he got there.”
Bridenthal (2-for-4) sprinted home once the ball ricocheted loose, and he slid under the tag to score a walk-off steal for a 5-4 victory and the Marauders first HHC title since 2009.
“We’ve overcame a lot of things, and we’ve become a very good team from that,” Dobbins remarked after the team’s post-game celebration. “Every game, we’d always fight back. We never gave up.”
Only the third team in program history to win 19 games, the Marauders have faced adversity throughout the year and have answered with perseverance.
They were tested during a heated HHC race to the finish with defending champion Greenfield-Central, and they passed. They’ve overcome deficits multiple times, particularly early through their 25-game schedule, losing only six times overall and twice in HHC play.
And just like Wednesday, it required one through 18.
Junior Landon Clark (1-for-3) set the tone during the Marauders’ HHC series finale, blasting a solo home run in the bottom of the first for his first of the season.
Starting pitcher A.J. Swingle scored the innings’ second run for a 2-0 lead on a wild pitch.
Another wild pitch in the bottom of the second plated a third run, and a 3-0 lead, as Nate Weaver scampered home with Jack Stank at the plate and the bases loaded with two outs.
Weaver made it 4-2 in the bottom of the fifth with an RBI single to score Bridenthal.
“We were just thinking about getting the win. Doing everything possible to get out there, get on base, be a team player, do whatever we had to do,” Clark said. “We knew we couldn’t rely on Greenfield to lose or them win and us be tied for No. 1. We wanted it as bad as the next person.”
The Tigers did their best to play spoiler in an attempt to force the Marauders to share the title much like they did in 2009 with New Palestine.
Robby Hook (2-for-4) cut the deficit 3-2 in the top of the third, however, with a one-out, two-run home run to score Indiana State recruit Jacob Pruitt, who reached with a double.
Swingle, who stranded three runners prior, regrouped and went 5.1 innings with just six hits allowed and three strikeouts.
But, he walked an uncharacteristic six batters, which nearly hurt the Marauders in the top of the fourth before Swingle exited in the sixth.
The Tigers worked Swingle’s pitch count up to 115 and opened the sixth with a lead-off single and a one-out hit, prompting Sullivan’s emergence.
With three saves to his credit before entering, Sullivan halted the threat with runners on second and third base behind a strikeout and a bases-loaded groundout.
“All of us, when someone has a bad game, someone else steps up. Our team is just built like that. Someone always steps up for somebody,” Walton said.
The Marauders’ bats came to Sullivan’s aid in the seventh after the Tigers loaded the bases twice in the top half to tie the game 4-4 behind two hits and a pair of walks.
A JD Morris bases-loaded RBI single made it 4-3 before Jackson Furnish knotted it up with a bases-loaded sacrifice fly to right field.
“We were thinking, hit the ball. We weren’t hitting the ball well all game. We had less than 10 hits. It was a struggle for us,” Walton said. “I’ve been with these guys since seventh, eighth grade. We’ve been playing together for so long.”
Their chemistry surfaced in the clutch.
Bridenthal kicked off the game-winning rally with a one-out single after Walton grounded out to lead off.
Payton Bovard followed with another hit, and Weaver loaded the bases with a walk as Sullivan stepped up to the plate.
Bridenthal handled the rest en route to coach King’s third conference title in his career — two at New Castle in the North Central Conference and now with Mt. Vernon in the HHC.
“This feels really good, especially for us in senior year because it’s never really been done before. We really came together, so to do something like this is really special, especially it being my last season,” Stank said.
After losing out on the 2020 campaign due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Marauders title made up for the lost opportunity.
“That was our statement last night after we beat them 7-1. Yeah, we’ve clinched a share, but we don’t want to share. We want to go out and earn the title on our own, so we have a job to do,” said King, who now has 280 career-coaching victories.
“What’s bad about this, and what I hate is for our seniors from last year because they could have experienced something like this, and they would have experienced something like this. That’s the worst part about it, but this senior class and whole group has done a great job.”
