Late rallies costly for Babe Ruth 14s
By: Bob Nuse
Heading into the weekend, Joe Weingart liked the chances of his Montgomery team in the Babe Ruth 14-year-old District One tournament.
"I really thought we had a good shot to be the first Montgomery team to win the districts in Babe Ruth," the Montgomery manager said. "I felt like the top three teams were all real close and we were right there with them."
After opening the tournament with a pair of wins, Montgomery dropped the winners’ bracket final, 8-5, to Nottingham in 10 innings on Friday night. The next day, Montgomery was eliminated from the tournament with a 12-11 loss to Hamilton.
"We had our chances in both games that we lost," Weingart said. "Looking back, if someone had said to me that we were going to give up 12 runs in a game, I would have said no way. If we score runs, we usually win the game. But it was a tough game for us, for both teams actually, because it was a real tight strike zone."
Montgomery had a lead in each of the games it lost, only to see that lead slip away late. In the loss to Nottingham, Montgomery took a 5-2 lead into the seventh inning, only to see Nottingham get even, scoring the tying run on a wild pitch. The Montgomery offense, which had been so tough most of the tournament, didn’t manage a hit over the last 5Ò innings of the game.
Against Hamilton the next day, Montgomery led, 11-6, heading to the bottom of the sixth, only to see the lead slip away over the final two innings.
"Against Nottingham we were up three going to the top of the seventh, and then they tie the game on a wild pitch with two outs," Weingart said. "Things just weren’t going our way the last couple of games. That loss (to Nottingham) was the tough one. We played a great game and I really felt like we were going to win it. We were so close and that was a game we could have won.
"They’re both good teams and obviously we can play with them. We just had a few breaks go against us the last couple games when we had the lead."
Montgomery pounded out 17 hits in the loss to Hamilton on Saturday, with Matt Kovacs getting three of them. Kovacs also drove in three runs, while Matt Pizzolato, Andrew Mahle, Steve Reynolds, Eric Karlik and Steve Wernicki all had two hits.
"That loss to Nottingham was a tough one," Weingart said. "We kept battling and we were in a pretty good position against Hamilton with a five-run lead in the sixth inning. I thought our pitching was better than what the results showed. The kids threw the ball well, it was just tough to adjust to some of the changes in the zone.
"It would have been nice to have won it and we were close. We just weren’t quite there."
Hamilton topped Nottingham on Sunday to force a winner-take-all final. In that game, Hamilton led, 3-1,when it was suspended by rain and scheduled to be completed on Monday.