Bremen loses ‘crazy’ NIC game to rivals
BREMEN — Half of Bremen’s first eight games ended in atypical fashion (one tie, three by the 10-run rule). Then came Wednesday night’s Northern Indiana Conference contest which was even more bizarre.
“That was a crazy game,” said Bremen head coach Ryan Carpenter.
After the last out was made, it went down officially as a 6-2 loss to Jimtown, but how it came to be was certainly not routine.
How crazy was it? In one sequence, a triple became an out, with the player hitting the triple along with his coach being removed from the game, but more on that later.
In close games, a break here or there can be the difference in winning and losing and every one seemed to go against Bremen.
Through three innings, Bremen had out-hit Jimtown (2-1), but was losing 2-0. Lions starting pitcher Evan Lopez had already struck out six Jimmies, then in the top of the fourth, was one strike away from a scoreless inning when two close pitches were called balls before Deacon Dillenbeck hit an RBI single for a 3-0 lead.
By that point, the Lions had a runner thrown out on a steal attempt that could have gone either way
and AJ Ton was thrown out at second on another bang-bang play trying to stretch a single into a double. Bremen finally scored a run in the fourth inning when Dawson Hickman’s infield single scored Baylor Orcutt, who had doubled three batters earlier to stay within striking distance,
3-1.
Then the fifth inning happened.
After Jimtown went scoreless, Ashton Shively ripped a triple to the right-center field fence to open the bottom half of the inning for Bremen. As he came up from his headfirst slide into third and
brushed the dirt off, the base umpire saw that he was wearing jewelry and removed Shively from the game. Head coach Carpenter was also told he was to be constrained to the dugout for the rest of the game for allowing a player to have jewelry on. Marcos Gonzalez came in
as the runner in Shively’s place, but before the next pitch Jimtown claimed that Shively had missed first base. The base ump agreed and when the appeal was made, Shively/gonzalez was called out.
The next batter was Shay Kyser, who promptly singled, but that hit did not include an RBI after the Shively fallout. Orcutt’s single two batters later scored Kyser, but Jimtown still led, 3-2, instead of it being a tie. The next two batters for the Lions were
each called out on close plays at first base and Bremen never threatened again.
After giving up two walks and a double to open the sixth inning, Lopez’s night on the mound was over. All three of those runners eventually scored for the final runs of the game. Lopez’s final line was nine strikeouts, seven hits and five walks in 5.1 innings of work.