HIGHLAND – When all was said and done, the Metro East Bears could only ponder what could have been.
The Bears had a 3-0 lead on Highland through three-and-a-half innings and seemed poised to force a winner-take-all game in the Illinois American Legion District 22 playoff final at Highland’s Glik Park/Optimist Field Saturday afternoon.
Highland, though, had other ideas; they scored two runs each in the middle three innings to win the the district crown 6-3 and advance to next week’s Illinois Fifth Division tournament in West Frankfort; the winner of that tournament moves into the state tournament in Jerseyville July 27-30.
The loss didn’t mean the end of the Bears’ season; as host team of the Aug. 3-7 Great Lakes Regional at SIU-Edwardsville’s Roy Lee Field, Metro East has a berth in it under Legion rules.
Still, it wasn’t the way the Bears wanted to get to the regional; Metro East manager Ken Schaake lamented missed opportunities after taking a 3-0 lead. “We missed some opportunities, but we also gave them some opportunities,” Schaake said, citing several mistakes the Bears made that helped give Highland runs. “They got guys in scoring position with less than two outs, and they got the sacrifice fly, they got the ground ball, they got runs.
“There were opportunities for us, but they took advantage of their opportunities.”
Highland’s win gave them their first district title in three decades and it left their manager, Harry Painter, “speechless.”
“You can see we’re sitting with 12-13 guys and we started with 22; the guys are willing to play baseball, stick it out and just come every day and be ready to play,” Painter said. “To do the things they’ve done in the last seven or eight games, when we got our stuff together.
“It took awhile to get things together, we got our stuff together and we’ve won our last 5-6 in a row. We haven’t scored less than six runs a game in our last five games, our pitching performances have been incredible. It’s been a spectacular season; I don’t know what to say.”
The Bears got out of the gates quickly, stringing together three straight singles from Collin Clayton, Jake Garella and Drake Hampton to bring in Clayton and give the Bears the early lead. Two more runs came in in the second from Cole Hansel and Steven Patten as the Bears took advantage of some Highland miscues to grab a 3-0 lead.
The lead stood up going into the fourth when Highland pulled to within a run after a couple of miscues of Bears’ own and a groundout to second brought in Dillon Hallemann and Jordan Smith. Highland’s Griffin Welz, who got the ball from Painter, managed to keep Bears at bay with timely pitches and Metro East mistakes to get the game to 3-2.
The next inning, Highland took advantage of Bear mistakes, including a pair of errors and two hits and scored Blaine Ray and Cody Bentlage to take the lead at 4-3 through five. Two more runs scored in the sixth thanks to a Ray double and a sacrifice fly from Bentlage that brought in Chris Dickman and Will Greenwald.
But Greenwald came up with the game’s biggest play in the top of the eighth when, with Jordan Yenne on base, Patten yanked a deep fly to the left-field corner that looked as though was going to be extra bases and a run that could have sparked a rally. Greenwald ran out to the corner and made a spectacular over-the-shoulder catch to cut the heart out of the Metro East rally.
From there, Welz shut down the Bears as they went down to send Highland to the next tournament.
Clayton and Garella both went 2-for-5 on the day while Drake Hampton was 3-for-5 with a RBI; Hansel was 2-for-2 and Tate Wargo was 1-for-3; Hampton took the loss, throwing five innings and giving up four runs (none of them earned) on four hits and walking two while strikigng out five. Yenne and Storm Coffman came on in relief.
Halleman was 2-for-4 for Highland, with Bentlage, Jordan Smith, Dickmann, Greenwald and Ray each contributing hits.
