In the mud and humidity, Tyrone Legion and McMuller Furniture battled at the Harry B. Sickler Jr. Sports Complex in Tyrone. It was not a pretty sight.
Tyrone Legion was short in players again and ended up that way on the scoreboard as well. McMullen’s Brian Plummer limited Tyrone Legion to just two base hits and his teammates took advantage of four Tyrone errors to get out early-defeating Tyrone Legion 12-0 in five innings.
McMullen Furniture opened the game with a a pair of unearned runs in the first, then scored four more in the fourth, all unearned and doubled their total with six in the fifth to end the game by the 10-run mercy rule.
The biggest blow perhaps was a bases-loaded double in the fourth by McMullen second baseman Shawn Price that scored all three base runners when the game was still in doubt. McMullen Furniture had just a 2-0 lead at the time.
Barry Gummo pitched the complete game for Tyrone Legion striking out six and walking three.
After yielding two unearned runs in the first, Gummo retired the side in order in the second and pitched out of trouble in the third by fanning the last two batters, after an error and double by Mike Thrower had put runners at second and third with just one out.
In the fourth inning, McMullen loaded the bases on a walk and two errors, before Price ripped a shot to straight-away center to plate everybody. Price then scored on a single by Thrower.
Tyrone Legion was able to get just three runners on base against Plummer. Left fielder Andy Garofoli was hit by a pitch with two outs in the first, Barry Gummo singled to right with two outs in the third and Brandon Maceno singled to center with two outs in the fourth. Both Gummo and Maceno moved up a base to second on wild pitchers, but Plummer kept Tyrone Legion from advancing to third base.
Plummer gave up no runs on two hits, while striking out six and not walking a batter to record the victory.
McMullen paraded 11 batters to the plate in the fifth inning to score half a dozen runs. Plummer, Mark Sprouse and Mike Weyandt each singled in a run and Zach Haulman, Mike Sprouse and Taylor Miller scored on wild pitches.
“We had a bunch of kids who had to work tonight that I didn’t find out about until the last minute and Ben Gummo was playing basketball,” said Tyrone Legion manager John Harlow. Tyrone Legion didn’t get their ninth player until about 10 minutes before the game. “We didn’t have our full team. Some of the kids who were there tonight played as hard as they could. Barry Gummo gave up 12 runs, but only three or four were earned. Some of the kids hustled. We have to put this behind us and hope like heck we will have a full ball team tomorrow. The kids who were working tonight, hopefull they won’t be working tomorrow. We play Altoona First and if we play like we did tonight, we’ll see what McMullen’s did earlier in the week when Altoona First beat them 28-0 in five innings. They are that good. When our team plays together they have a lot of potential. The game we played against ReMax at Geesey Park that we tied 4-4 was as good a game as we have ever played. We haven’t been close to that since. So hopefully the kids will come to the game tomorrow with a good frame of mind. We are throwing (Nick) Friling at them, our best pitcher, let’s hope we have some fielding behind him.”
McMullen Furniture 12 Tyrone Legion 0 (5 innings)
MCMULLEN FURNITURE – Forr, ss, 4-2-1; Price, 2b, 4-2-3; Eck, cr-2b, 0-1-0; Thrower, rf, 3-0-2; Weyandt, c, 4-1-3; Haulman, 1b, 4-1-1; Plummer, p, 3-0-1; Mi. Sprouse, cf, 2-2-0; Ma. Sprouse, 3b, 2-1-0; Cole, 3b, 0-0-0; Moschella, lf, 2-1-0; Miller, lf, 0-1-0. TOTALS 28-12-11.
TYRONE LEGION – Ba. Gummo, p, 2-0-1; Friling, cf, 2-0-0; Garofoli, lf, 2-0-0; Soellner, c, 2-0-0; Maceno, ss, 2-0-1; Cushion, 2b-3b, 2-0-0; Wilson, rf-2b, 2-0-0; Clark, 1b, 2-0-0; Myers, 3b-rf, 2-0-0. TOTALS 17-0-2.
McMullen Furniture 200 46 12-11-0.
Tyrone Legion 000 00 0-2-4.
2B: Price 1, Thrower 1, Weyandt 1, Plummer 1.
RBI: Price 3, Thrower 2, Weyandt 2, Plummer 1, Ma. Sprouse 1.
SO: Plummer 6, Ba. Gummo 6.
BB: Ba. Gummo 3.
WP: Plummer LP; Ba. Gummo.
