Baseball legend Yogi Berra said it best — it’s like deja vu all over again.
A 4-0 loss to Plattsmouth in Monday’s winner’s bracket final of the American Legion Class B Seniors state tournament has the Wayne American Legion Post 43 Seniors in an all-to-familiar spot, needing a win to keep their tournament hopes alive.
Much as they did two weeks ago in inning the Class B, Area 4 title, Wayne dropped to the losers bracket after running into a buzzsaw pitching effort by Plattsmouth ace Gave Villamonte, who gave up only a first-inning single and a hit batter in facing the minimum number of batters to drop Wayne into the losers bracket as one of the four teams still left heading into Tuesday evening’s play.
“I told the boys, sometimes you have days like this that aren’t yours and that was obvious today,” coach Robbie Gamble said after Monday’s loss. “The Villamonte kid was as sharp as I’ve seen him. He had us off-balance all day, and when we did hit the ball well, we hit it right at people.”
Wayne got in a hole right off the bat when starter Kaleb Moormeier hit the first two batters, then committed a fielding error that ultimately led to three unearned runs for Plattsmouth in the opening frame.
That was all Villamonte need — he gave up a one-out single to Wyatt Heikes in the bottom of the first, and his defense turned a double play to get him out of that inning. He was spotless until hitting Jase Dean with the first pitch of the sixth inning, but another inning-ending double play prevented any other damage as Plattsmouth secured a spot in Wednesday’s championship, with Springfield, Wahoo and Wayne still in the hunt.
Gamble said that Moormeier threw well in spite of the bumpy start to the game.
“He had a rough start, but even if you take that away it’s still a 1-0 game and we didn’t even get a guy to second base,” Gamble said. “Kaleb pitched well enough for us to win, but we didn’t hit the ball at all.”
Gamble said the 25-9 Wayne Seniors have been in this position before. Last summer, they lost in the first round and came within one out in extra innings before losing to Plattsmouth. In the spring, they were one out away from the championship after an opening-round loss. And last week, they rebounded from a second-day loss to win four in a row to get to this point.
“These kids know what they need to do when their backs are against the wall, so we’re up for the challenge,” Gamble said.
Opening-round win
The Post 43 Seniors opened the eight-team, double-elimination tournament on Saturday with a 7-4 win over York Kings Legion, overcoming three errors and getting some key hits in a four-run second inning to earn the opening-round win.
Wayne spotted York a run in the top of the first, the scored four in the second to take control of the game. Dean's suicide squeeze scored Heikes to tie the game, and Gavin Anderson followed with a one-out sacrifice bunt to plate James Dorcey to give Wayne the lead for good. A two-run single by Gavin Redden to right field brought home two more runs to make it a 4-1 game.
York got back to within a run in the fifth with two runs, but Wayne matched that tally in the bottom of the inning on a single to right by Aiden Liston, scoring Calvin Starzl and Devin Anderson. Wayne would repeat the match-me game in the sixth, countering a York score with an RBI double by Devin Anderson to score Redden and make it a 7-4 game.
Devin Anderson had two hits and Redden and Liston both had a hit and two RBIs to highlight Wayne's seven-hit effort. Heikes, Dorcey and Starzl also had hits. Liston threw five innings to get the win, with Heikes and Kaleb Moormeier pitching in relief.
Four-run sixth key
On Sunday, the Post 43 Seniors used a four-run sixth inning to break a 1-1 tie and post a 5-1 win over Springfield Post 143.
Springfield got a run in the bottom of the first, and Wayne would tie the game in the third when Devin Anderson grounded out and Starzl came home to score after reaching on catcher's interference.
It stayed tied until the sixth when took advantage of two Springfield errors to score four runs. Dean sacrificed with the bases loaded and reached on a fielder's choice, scoring Heikes. Mason Heikes followed with an RBI single to center, scoring his brother, and Starzl singled to right to bring home James Dorcey. A fielder's choice plated Gavin Anderson, who pinch-ran for Dean, and the Wayne defense took it from there.
“That sixth inning was huge,” Gamble said. “We bunted a little bit and they threw it around and we were able score some runs. Mason Heikes came up with a huge hit for us and it kind of got contagious after that, and you need big innings like to beat a good team like Springfield.”
Springfield had a chance to make a game of it in the bottom of the seventh with runners on second and third and nobody out, but Redden got a foul pop out and struck out the net two batters to end the rally.
“I think, if they get a couple there they might think they still have a shot, but getting out of the sixth with nothing was huge,” Gamble said. “We didn’t want to get to the top of the order, but we walked the No. 9 hitter and Gavin was able to get a pop up and a strikeout to end it.”
Redden threw a complete-game win, striking out three and walking two while allowing six hits and an unearned run in 101 pitches.
“Gavin really stayed composed for us today,” Gamble said. “The only time we thought about taking him out was early, but we felt like we really needed him to go as far as we could with him and it would be dumb to pull him, and he came through and pitched a great game for us.”
Offensively, six different players had singles with Redden, Devin Anderson, Dean, Mason Heikes and Starzl all batting in runs.
