BELLEVILLE – Alton American Legion Post 126’s junior team gave a good accounting of themselves Saturday in a pair of games in the Belleville group of the Firecracker Classic tournament at Whitey Herzog Field.
The junior Legionnaires – who split their squad for the Firecracker and Greenville Wood Bat tournaments this weekend, with the younger players in the Greenville tourney and older players at the Firecracker – dropped a 5-2 decision to Festus, Mo., in their first game in Belleville Saturday, leading most of the way before Festus scored five times in the bottom of the sixth, then lost to Morgantown, W.Va., by a 2-1 score in their second game Saturday evening to fall to 0-2 in the tournament but to 20-9 on the summer.
Alton has two more group games in Belleville Sunday, taking on Belleville’s senior Hilgards at 10 a.m. and Jefferson City, Mo., at 12:30 p.m., to finish their group play. The team in Greenville continues their tournament play today.
“They had a couple of hits,” said Alton manager Doug Booten following the Festus game. “Blake (Marks) had one walk all game and he threw well; they hit two or three balls that just fell in off the end of the bat or scribblers in the infield. That’s where they got runs in the sixth inning – that’s baseball. There was really nothing that we could have done.
“That’s a good team we played (in Festus); they had two hits up until the sixth inning; the had six hits and three of them were balls that just fell in. We played well – you look at the scoreboard and we had no errors. We played very well defensively. We came down there and hope to compete; I don’t think we expected to win it, as long as we compete – just like we did in that game – we’ll be fine. They need to be challenged, as (Dennis) Sharp (Alton’s manager) says and this is a big challenge for them here this weekend.”
Alton’s runs in the Festus game both came from Gage Booten, who scored in the first and in the third from a Marks single in the first and a Griffin Bianco sacrifice fly to center in the third. Marks’ pitching and some defensive sparklers – one in the fifth by Adam Stilts at third base in particular – helped keep Festus at bay before they broke through in the sixth, thanks to some seeing-eye singles that brought in a total of five runs.
Ryan Best was 1-for-4 for Alton in their opener, while Gage Booten went 1-for-2 with two runs scored, Cullen McBride 1-for-4, Marks 1-for-4 with a RBI, Bianco a RBI, Stilts 1-for-4 and Rylee Bernot 1-for-3. Marks went 5.1 innings, striking out five in taking the hard-luck loss.
Against Morgantown, Alton scored a solo run in the fourth while Morgantown scored once each in the first and fourth, Alton’s run coming on a Marks single to center that brought in Best, who had reached first on an error to open the inning and was sacrificed to second by Gage Booten and went to third on a McBride single.
Gage Booten, McBride, Marks and Stilts each had hits in the second game for Alton, with Marks getting an RBI. Stilts went the distance for Post 126, dismissing two by strikeout in taking the loss.
In other Belleville group games Saturday, the Hilgards opened with a 1-0, eight-inning win over Jefferson City before defeating Festus 6-5; the Morgantown-Belleville result was not available.
