by James Ryder
The 12u National East Championship game featured the Oil City Bandits and the South Shore Sharks on Sunday at Plainedge Park. The game was played well by both teams, but it was the Bandits who stayed true to their name by stealing the show, as well as 11 stolen bases, in a 12-7 victory.
Clearly, the teams scored a lot of runs, but Oil City didn’t quite score the way you may think they did. Exactly half of their runs came off of two walks (each with bases loaded) and four pass balls. In addition to their aforementioned base stealing, the Bandits offense stayed consistent throughout the day and allowed them to never be down in the game past the first inning.
Speaking of the first inning, the Sharks scored one run in the opening frame when Sawyer Shectman hit a single to right field that scored Kyle Scheurer. This was their only lead of the game. In the bottom half, the Bandits got their big offensive day started by scoring four runs. Every batter in the lineup got an at bat in the inning. Ryan Piccola led off with a single up the middle and then stole 2nd and 3rd base before tying the game on a pass ball. Todd Segarra reached 1st on the same pass ball after striking out and also stole 2 bases. Ivan Epps walked just before Segarra scored on another passed ball. Dylan Beirne’s single and Carson Fessler’s walk loaded the bases. The lead was expanded 4-1 on those two walks.
South Shore tied the game back up in the second inning thanks to an RBI single form Scotty Troy and two RBI groundouts Jake Ducorsky from Scheurer. However, Oil City took the lead back in the bottom of the second after Epps grounded out to the second baseman to score Piccola. The back and forth scoring stopped in the top of the third but started again when Oil City scored two more runs in the bottom half when Fessler scored on Chase Haffeg’s groundout to shortstop and Mike Regan scoring on another passed ball.
The Sharks got a run back in the fourth when Sean Varon hit an RBI infield single that brought Brayden Handleman home making it a 7-5 ball game. The Bandits came back to the batter box to score two runs again, this time on an Epps infield single and another pass ball that allowed Epps to cross home plate.
With the Sharks down four, four runs is exactly how many were scored in the fifth inning. Unfortunately, three of them were from the Bandits. Justin Alvarez’s single to right field gave South Shore their sixth run, but the Bandits responded by breaking the game open and scoring their final three runs. Haffeg and Sean Arnott lead off the bottom of the fifth with a walk and a single, respectively, before the first two outs were recorded. Despite this, they had a two out rally consisting of an RBI single from Segarra and a 2 RBI single from Dan Pignataro.
In the top of the sixth, the Sharks managed to score only one run on Varon’s two out infield single. It was Beirne who pitched all six innings for Oil City and got back to back strikeouts and retired Shectman on a lineout to end the game. Oil City’s 12 run outburst was due to some great plate discipline and timely base running. It proved more than enough to win them
