TCHS Warriors boys baseball team takes the field against ALAH
By Lenny Sementi
After nearly a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic Tuscola’s baseball team returned to the diamond last Monday, April 19 traveling to Arthur for a date with ALAH Knights. Coach Adam Carver’s group took the field shorthanded with only eleven players in tow and some of his most experienced players still playing football and just about snuck with a victory. Only two players with any varsity time on the Warriors diamond took the trip southwest.
The Knights set the Warriors down in order in the first and posted at least one run in the first four frames with crooked numbers in the second and fourth to run out to a 7-2 lead at the end of four and then held on. Senior Ben Tiezzi took the loss for Tuscola, giving up seven runs, four earned on seven hits and four walks, while striking out four. Dalton Addis closed out the final frame collecting three outs, allowing two to reach and striking out one as the duo posted goose eggs in the final two stanzas. Addis, new the program this year, banged out a pair of hits as well and Tiezzi posted two also with 2-RBI’s.
Senior Cole Cunningham broke the ice in the second with a double to left and then scored on an RBI single by Tiezzi for the first run after close to a two-year absence. Cunningham reached all four times recording two hits. Colton Musgrave was the next to cross the dish, singling up the middle and scoring on a double by Tiezzi in the fourth. Musgrave was at it again one inning later as the Warriors whittled away at the lead. The sophomore catcher followed a solo shot by Addis in the fifth with a two out dinger of his own cutting the lead to three 7-4.
Preston Brown walked to open the sixth, moved on back-to-back hits by Addis and Easton Cunningham and scored on a wild pitch narrowing the lead to two. That’s where it would stay as Tuscola’s late inning rally came up short. Carver’s crew had its chances leaving a pair in the sixth and a few more in the seventh. Tiezzi led off the final frame with a double, and moved on to a single by Jayden Gaines but both were stranded.
“Overall it was a good day,” stated the coach. “We knew we were young going in, but wanted to get these guys a game. It was competitive once we settled in and got some nerves out of the way.”