Spring City tops Souderton in state final
Post 234 couldn’t find enough offense in states
Souderton’s Dan Knechel knows that in baseball just because you do everything right doesn’t mean you get the results you wanted.
“It’s a game of chance. You could hit the ball really hard, it could be like a huge exit velo and you hit right at someone,” he said. “It is what it is, you’ve just got to move past and continue to be the best team you can be.”
That was the position Souderton was left to do after final two days of the Pennsylvania American Legion Tournament — still upbeat about its offen- sive approach despite few runs to show for it. Wednesday afternoon in the state final against Spring City, Post 234 put together seven hits but only a single run in falling to the Region 3 champ Red Sox 6-1.
“I wouldn’t say it’s not working because we’re hitting everything hard, we’re barrelling it up, But we’re just not scor- ing,” said Moses Clemens, who finished 2-for-3 on the day and drove in Souderton’s lone run. “We’re hitting it to people.”
It wasn’t an offensive outburst for Souderton in its time at Bear Stadium, finishing with 14 runs in its five state games — scoring more than two runs just once, that coming in the 8-0 win over
Swoyersville in the winner’s bracket final Monday.
Still, Souderton found away to edge first Uniontown — in nine innings — then Spring City by identical 2-1 scores before its eight-spot against Swoyersville. But Post 234 couldn’t squeeze out wins at the back end of the tournament, falling 4-1 to Ephrata Tuesday before another one-run effort Wednesday.
“We couldn’t get like how we’d get a guy on, move him over, they make a mistake and we’re off and running. It didn’t really happen the last two games,” Souderton coach Paul Meara said. “I thought we hit the ball hard, but a lot of them in the air, so that hurt a little bit.”
Spring City and Souderton each tallied a run in the first. The Red Sox grabbed the quick 1-0 lead on J.C. Price’s RBI double with Souderton answering on a Clemens RBI single in the bottom of the frame.
But Spring City put together the big inning that Souderton could not the past two days — plating five runs in batting around in the fourth. The Red Sox collecting three of their 11 total hits in the fourth, the biggest being Price’s two-- RBI double that extended SC’s lead to 5-1.
“It really def lates us. We felt like we had a really good shot at 1-1 going into the fourth but a big inning will always do that to you,” Knechel said. “We did it on Monday night when we scored six in the inning, we took the life out of Swoyersville. And they took the life out of us today and we just couldn’t bounce back from it.”
Souder ton d id put its leadoff runner on i n third, fourth and fifth innings but came up empty in each frame. Post 234’s best chance to get a comeback going came in the fifth. David Gulibon started with a walk while Luke Barnum belted a two-out double to right to put runners on second and third. Spring City opted to intentionally walk Nolan Bolton — who doubled in the first — to load the bases but Clemens flied out shallow center to end the threat.
“I don’t know why I swung at that pitch. I was just anxious, I guess,” Clemens said. “But that was not smart, shouldn’t of done that.”
The silver lining for Souderton is the scoring struggles came after it clinched its spot at the Mid-Atlantic Regionals in Purcellville, Virginia with those opening three wins. It is the first time Soud- erton has ever advances this far in the American Legion postseason and Post 234 is the Bux-Mont League’s first Mid-Atlantic qualifier since Doylestown won states in 2012.
“We got our bid and I don’t want to say we got f lat but we didn’t have that spark,” Meara said. “I told the kids, if I told you before the season that we were going to be 28-5 and second in the state and going to Mid-Atlantics, I would have been thrilled to death. I know it hurts today, but tomorrow looking back on what we did.”
Despite the run output, Knechel — who was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Pitcher — was still confident in Post 234’s bats. And when Souderton faces New Jersey champ Hamilton in the Mid-Atlantic opener Wednesday, there will not be a huge shake up in the team’s attitude at the plate.
“There’s nothing really to work on. I feel like there’s always room to improve as a team — we want more hits, we want more runs, of course. But as a mentality at the plate, approach is the main thing,” Knechel said. “And we have a pretty good approach right now. If a kid’s struggling, we’re going to make him see pitches, if he’s throwing strikes, we’re going to attack early.”