Roadrunners Outrun Charger Baseball, 6-4 and 14-7

"Baseball is such a tough game, it really humbles you at times. You just have to try to not get too high or too low." Good words of advice from former major leaguer Chase Utley. With the ACGC losing streak reaching five games on Thursday with a doubleheader loss to Interstate 35, it would be easy for the Chargers to "get too low." But today is another day. And there are games to be played! The team goes to Emmetsburg today (Saturday) to play games at noon and 2 PM.

Despite getting a total of twenty five hits against Roadrunner pitching, the Chargers were inconsistent in other aspects of the game and fell to the visitors 6-4 in game one and 14-7 in game two. Seventeen Chargers were stranded on the base paths in over the two games.

Charger coach Taylor Morris said it well when describing game one. "We continue to put good at bats together and now we just need the other facets to follow. We got a good start out of Brock (Littler), but he was forced to throw extra pitches because of some errors behind him."

ACGC took an early lead in the first inning when Littler and Miles Kading both singled and were driven home by a Newell Rogers single. After the Roadrunners tallied three runs in its second at bat, ACGC tied it with a run in the third inning and took the lead in the fifth when Kading singled, stole second and came home on Newell's base hit. But that 4-3 lead was short lived as I-35 regained the lead with a three run fourth at bat and never trailed again.

Rogers led ACGC with three hits in game one, while Littler and Cayden Jensen each had two. Littler threw a complete game, giving up eleven hits, striking out four and walking just one Roadrunner.

The second game started out in similar fashion with the Chargers staying even through the early innings. The home team broke a 3-3 tie in the bottom of the third inning when Miles Kading doubled, advanced to third on an error, and came home on a passed ball.

After the Roadrunners went up 6-4 in the top of the fourth, ACGC again came back to tie it with a pair of scores in the bottom of the inning. Clayton Wardyn led off with a single, advanced to second on Tegan Slaybaugh's bunt, went to third on a balk by the I-35 pitcher, and scored on Andrew Mahaffey's sacrifice fly.

The rally continued with consecutive singles by Littler, Kading, and Rogers which scored Littler to knot the game at 6-6. Bu that was a close as the Chargers would get, as the Roadrunners broke the game open with a six run fifth inning to put the game away.

Littler and Miles Kading each had three hits, with Rogers and Wardyn coming up with two each. Four hurlers had mound duties with Rogers going the first four innings and Reid Rumelhart, Lucas Marsh, and Miles Kading each pitching one inning. Six of the fourteen I-35 runs were unearned.

"We hurt ourselves multiple times when we forced our pitchers to throw more pitchers than they needed to," Taylor said following game two. "We made six errors behind our pitchers and that's never going to win games."

Game one score by inning:

ACGC 201 010 0--4 11 2

I-35 030 030 x--6 11 2

ACGC hitting: (AB-R-H-RBI) Crawford(4-0-1-0) Littler(4-2-2-0) M.Kading(4-1-0-0) Rogers(1-1-3-2) Jensen(4-0-2-2) E.Kading(3-0-0-0) Rumelhart (3-0-1-0) Marsh(2-0-1-0) Wardyn(3-0-1-0)

ACGC pitching: (IP-H-R-ER-BB-S0) Littler (6.00-11-6-5-1-4)

Game two score by inning:

I-35 030 360 2--14 14 2

ACGC 121 201 0-- 7 14 6

Hitting: Mahaffey(4-0-1-3) Littler(5-3-3-0) M.Kading(4-1-3-1) Rogers(4-0-2-2) Jensen(3-0-1-0) Rumelhart(3-1-1-0) Marsh(3-1-0-0) Wardyn(3-1-2-0) Slaybaugh(4-0-1-0)

Pitching: Rogers(4.00-9-10-6-2-2) Rumelhart(1.00-3-2-2-2-1) Marsh(1.00-1-0-0-0-1) M.Kading(1.00-1-2-0-2-1)