INWOOD- The Greenbrier East Spartans baseball has had a busy week with a game every day but Thursday. On Wednesday, they defeated the no.1 team in Class AAA, Pikeview, and on Friday they were back on the road again for a double header with the Musselman Applemen.
Game one lasted an unreal 12 innings with the Spartans coming up short 4-3, and the nightcap finished in just six innings with the Applemen winning that one 13-3.
Game One:
East rolled out Brady May on the mound for the first game of the day. May, normally the Spartans everyday catcher, pitched pretty well and had to throw 106 pitches to get through his outing, but was solid, nonetheless.
Musselman got on the board first in the second inning when Will Polvinale laced an RBI double to right field that scored Taryn Boyles. May then got the final two outs sandwiched between a walk to avert the big inning and the Spartans came up on offense.
With one out in the third, Graham Brewster doubled and then moved over to third on Nelson Lynch’s groundout. May then helped his own cause and plated Brewster with an RBI single and East tied the game at 1-all headed to the bottom half of the third.
The bats went quiet for both teams from that point on until the top of the seventh when the Spartans took the lead with the hope of pulling an upset on the road. May hit a sac fly to center field that scored Brewster, who had walked earlier in the inning. That put Greenbrier East up 2-1. The next batter, Ashton Cochran popped a fly to left field that was misplayed and the Spartans scored again to make it 3-1 headed to the bottom of the seventh with the Apple men’s last chance staring them down.
And they made it count.
Musselman (7-11) scored two runs on just one hit in the frame and tied the game at 3-3 to extend the contest.
No one could get anything going for the first three extra frames, but it was Musselman that finally capitalized in their final at-bat. After Brewster, who came in to pitch in the extra session, hit Ethan Hinchman with a pitch, Seth Kisner bunted him over to third after Hinchman had taken second base on a wild pitch. Ryder Ganse then hit a sac fly just deep enough to plate Hinchman and the Applemen won in walk-off fashion.
Brewster led East with three hits and two runs. May drove in two runs and also pitched eight innings and had five strikeouts.
Game Two:
The Spartans (11-7) seemed to run out of gas in game two. They jumped ahead 1-0 in the top of the first on May’s double that scored Nelson Lynch, but Musselman gained all their momentum in the bottom of the second.
They put up six runs by way of base hits and a couple Spartan errors in the field.
The Applemen used that momentum to score at least one run over the next four innings and controlled the game from there on out. The Spartans put up two runs in the fifth on a 2-run single from Brewster that scored Zion Detko and Brayden Bascombe.
Brewster led the Spartan offense again with a hit and two RBIs.
Layne Lambert took the loss for East on the mound while Musselman’s Polvinale got the win.
The Spartans are back yet again on Saturday morning with another double header against Martinsburg. Game one is at 11:00 AM and Game two is at 2:00 PM.
