EMPORIUM —
A surprisingly early start to the day resulted in a disappointingly early exit from the Pennsylvania Senior League State Championship tournament for the Crawford County All-Stars, which fell to Pennridge in Sunday’s semifinal round 3-0.
“We were expecting to at least be in the championship game, if not win it and play (in the Eastern Regional) in New Jersey,” said Crawford County head coach Scott Walters. “But that’s the way it is.”
Crawford County had expected to start yesterday’s game at 4 p.m. However, due to a mix-up in scheduling the game turned out to have a 1 p.m. start time. Pennridge got a call about it the night before. Crawford County found out around noon yesterday, with some players still en route from Crawford County.
“They called and said the bracket on the website wasn’t right,” said Walters. “So I said, ‘We can get there at 2. We still have some players coming.’
“Regardless, it didn’t matter if we started at 4 or whenever, we didn’t hit the baseball.”
The game set off a little before 2 p.m. And it didn’t look like the time change affected either side. Pennridge went 1-2-3 in the first inning. Mitchell Wood got a one-out single for Crawford County in its half of the frame, but didn’t make it home.
The second inning is where Crawford ran into trouble. Starting pitcher Scott Sada experienced some control issues, loading the bases on a walk, a hit batter and another walk.
Pennridge’s next batter, Tyler Gotwals, hit a chopper to third baseman Cole Baker. Baker threw home to catcher Tyler Walters, but the play didn’t pan out and Danny Losinger scored from third and Pennridge still had the bases juiced.
One out later, Sada hit another batter and then walked another. Pennridge now led 3-0.
“They came out (of the second inning) and they still didn’t have a hit,” said Walters. “They had three runs on no hits.”
Luke Basko came in for Sada and he and the Crawford County defense kept Pennridge off the scoreboard for the rest of the way.
“It was three runs, but it was still the first inning,” Walters said. “We had a lot of time to score three runs. But we did not do it.”
Those three runs turned out to be more than enough for Pennridge and pitcher David Tatoian. Through seven innings, he allowed just four singles, didn’t walk a batter and struck out five.
“That’s my son, David,” said Dave Tatoian, Pennridge’s head coach. “He’s my workhorse pitcher. He rolled his ankle (Saturday) night in a game. So, he was pitching with a bad landing foot. So, good for him for stepping up for the team. But the nice thing about that was the tight defense behind him.”
Crawford County had opportunities. For example, in the second inning Jesse Staudt and Sada led off with back-to-back singles. And with Staudt on third, the locals tried a squeeze play that ended up with Staudt getting caught in a pickle and eventually getting tagged out at home on a questionable call by the umpire.
Then in the sixth, Joel Mowris reached on an error and Wood hit his second single of the day to put two aboard with one out. Again, nothing came of it.
“To their credit, their pitcher did a nice job and kept us off balance,” said Walters. “But we had runners in scoring position and didn’t execute. We put the ball in play, but they made the plays.”
In yesterday’s other semifinal game, Upper Moreland defeated Reynolds 7-3. UM then went on to win the state title game over Pennridge 9-2.
Local Sports
Crawford Co. eliminated in state semifinals
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