WINTER HAVEN, Fla. — It was a good old-fashioned game of one-upmanship when the Saint Mary's University of Minnesota and Concordia baseball team squared off Tuesday afternoon.
• The Cardinals scored single runs in the first two innings … and the Cobbers answered with single runs in the bottom half of the first two innings.
• The Cobbers scored four runs in the third … and the Cardinals did them two better with a six-run fifth.
• Saint Mary's blasts its first home run of the season in the sixth … Concordia belts its first two round-trippers in its next at-bat.
• The Cardinals finished the nine-inning contest with 16 hits … the Cobbers matched that 16-hit effort.
Fortunately for coach
Nick Winecke, the Cobbers could not one-up the Cardinals' six-run fifth and four-run sixth, as the Cardinals held on for a 14-11 victory.
"It was a typical Saint Mary's-Concordia game—two teams out their mashing the ball all over the field," said Winecke, whose team improved to 2-1 with the win. "Both teams swung the bats very well and I thought the game had the intensity of an MIAC playoff game—it was a just a great day at the park."
After matching single runs in the first two innings, Concordia scored four runs in the fourth, but Saint Mary's answered, taking the lead for good with a six-run fifth—highlighted by two-run doubles by
Bob Kinne (St. Paul, Minn.) and
Jake Mencacci (Wheaton, Ill).
Saint Mary's pushed its lead to 12-6 with four more runs in the sixth—three on Kinne's first collegiate home run—but the Cobbers would not go away quietly, using two home runs of their own in the bottom of the sixth to make it a 12-9 contest.
The Cardinals scored single runs in the seventh and eighth to push their lead back to five, 14-9, and survived an eighth-inning scare when Concordia scored twice and left the bases loaded to close out the scoring.
Kinne finished 3-for-4 with three runs scored and five RBIs, while
Joe Seegers (Oconomowoc, Wis.) chipped in three hits, and
Willie Doll (Amherst, Wis.),
Ben Buerkle (Roseville, Minn.), Mencacci, and
Jacob Frost (Moline, Ill.) all had two hits.
Josh Hottinger (Oconomowoc, Wis.) picked up his first collegiate pitching win, coming on in relief of starter
Jacob Dawson (Oakdale, Minn.) and allowing three runs on six hits in 2 1/3 innings. A.J Redders (Middleton, Wis.) notched his first save of the season, going 1 1/3 innings of hitless relief.
The Cardinals (2-1 overall) are back on the diamond on Wednesday, squaring off against Houghton in a 9 a.m. nonconference nine-inning contest.
