The Tyrone Legion Federation baseball team jumped out to an early 6-0 lead on Tuesday at the Harry K. Sickler Jr. Athletic Park, but once-beaten Altoona First awakened from their slumber to send home a dozen runners in the top of the sixth to drop Tyrone Legion to 5-4 on the season with a 17-7 mercy-rule win.
\nNick Friling kept Tyrone Legion in the game, despite not feeling well, going five innings before finally running out of gas. Pitching with heart and guts alone, Friling went through the Altoona First lineup yielding just a harmless single through the first three innings and was able to take a 7-5 lead into the sixth inning. Friling struck out five and walked six.
\nTyrone Legion opened the scoring with a run in the first and followed that up with five more in the second.
\nFriling singled with one out in the first, moved to second on a bunt single by Barry Gummo and third on a wild pitch. Brandon Maceno got Friling home with a fielder\u2019s choice.
\nIn the second inning, Tyrone Legion sent nine men to the plate to score five times. Derrick Soellner and Andy Garofoli singled to open the frame. Nick Cushion moved both runners up with a sacrifice bunt and was safe at first on a throwing error by Altoona First starting pitcher Rick Feltenberger that allowed courtesy runner Tyler Rickards to score. Tyler Mertiff walked with one out to load the bases. Friling helped himself with a two-run single scoring Cushion and Jason Wilson, who had hit into a fielder\u2019s choice. Following another fielder\u2019s choice by Barry Gummo, Ben Gummo doubled in Mertiff and Barry Gummo to give Tyrone Legion a 6-0 advantage.
\nAltoona First started to get things in gear with three runs in the fourth, with the big blow a two-run single by Ben Ritchey and scored two more an inning later on back-to-back doubles by Darren Horton and Lee Kensinger and Tyrone\u2019s only error of the contest.
\nTyrone Legion got one run back in the fourth inning. Barry Gummo walked to lead off the inning and eventually scored on a throwing error by Ritchey behind the plate.
\nTyrone Legion very nearly got out of the sixth with just a tie ball game. Altoona First filled the bases with nobody out and then got a run-scoring single from Ritchey and got a gift to score the tying run when Tyrone reliever Ben Gummo hit Horton with a pitch to force in a run.
\nTyrone Legion brought their infield up and Gummo inticed two straight ground balls, one to third baseman Nick Cushion and one to shortstop Tyler Mertiff. Each resulted in a force out at home. But when it appeared the threat was over, Altoona First stepped it up to plate 10 more runs before Tyrone Legion could secure the third out. Lee Kensinger belted a single and double to score three runners and designated hitter Doug Ritchey had two singles and three RBIs as well to lead the attack.
\n\u201cNick Friling got us to the sixth inning on guts alone,\u201d said Tyrone Legion manager John Harlow. \u201cHe was sick, he was drained, but he went out there and pitched a whale of a ball game for five solid innings. I gave him the option to start the sixth and he said he could go, but after a couple batters, you could tell he was done. We got the bases loaded, nobody out. Ground ball to Nick Cushion, he throws home, ground ball to Mert, he throws home. You think we have it. Then there\u2019s a ground ball to Nick Friling at first. It takes a bad hop over his head and the merry-go-round started.\u201d
\nFriling and Derrick Soellner lead Tyrone Legion with two hits each with Soellner\u2019s double the only Tyrone extra-base hit.
\n\u201cThese kids deserved better than losing 17-7,\u201d lamented Harlow. \u201cWe hit the ball better than we have hit all year for the first four innings, then we ran out of gas. That will come, we still have five more games to play this week.
\n\u201cI can\u2019t say enough about the way Nick Friling pitched tonight, and he had two hits as well. The kid\u2019s out there sick as a dog, pitches five good innings and keeps us in the ballgame and gets two hits.\u201d
\nJeff Curfman picked up the win for Altoona First with two and 2\/3 scoreless innings of relief and Lee Kensinger pitched a one-two-three sixth inning to close out the win.
\n\u201cThe kids played hard and didn\u2019t give up,\u201d said coach Harlow, \u201ceven when Altoona First was hitting the crap out of the ball in the sixth, no matter how ugly it got. Even in our last at bat, we hit the ball hard, but right at people. Sooner or later the ball is going to fall in for us.\u201d
\nTyrone Legion plays plays a tripleheader on Thursday beginning with a game at Tyrone against Park Furniture at 5:30 p.m. Then they travel to Mansion Park to complete the suspended game and play a complete regular game against ReMax. On Saturday, Tyrone plays Dick\u2019s Pharmacy at Geesey Park at 2 p.m. and moves to Vets Field to play Sheetz at 5 p.m.
\nAltoona First 17 Tyrone Legion 7 (6 innings)
\nALTOONA FIRST – B. Ritchey, c, 4-2-3; Stern, 3b, 4-1-2; Horton, ss, 3-2-2; L. Kensinger, cf-p, 5-2-3; K. Kensinger, 1b, 4-2-0; Nevins, 2b, 3-2-1; Bassler, rf, 3-1-0; Snyder, lf, 1-3-1; Feltenberger, p, 0-0-0; Curfman, p, 0-0-0; D. Ritchey, dh, 4-2-2. TOTALS 31-17-14.
\nTYRONE LEGION – Mertiff, ss, 2-1-0; Friling, p-1b, 4-1-2; Ba. Gummo, cf, 3-2-1; Be. Gummo, 3b-p, 3-0-1; Maceno, 2b, 3-0-0; Soellner, c, 3-0-2; Rickards, cr, 0-1-0; Myers, cr, 0-0-0; Garofoli, lf, 3-0-1; Cushion, 1b-3b, 1-1-0; Wilson, rf, 2-1-0; Tremmel, cr-rf, 1-0-1. TOTALS 25-7-8.
\nAltoona First 000 32(12) 17-14-4.
\nTyrone Legion 150 100 7-8-1.
\n2B: Horton 2, L. Kensinger 1, Be. Gummo 1, Soellner 1.
\nRBI: L. Kensinger 4, B. Ritchey 3, D. Ritchey 3, Horton 2, Snyder 2, Stern 1, Bassler 1, Friling 2, Be. Gummo 2, Maceno 1.
\nSO: Curfman 1, Friling 5.
\nBB: Feltenberger 2, Curfman 2, Friling 6, Be. Gummo 2.
\nWP: Curfman LP: Friling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Tyrone Legion Federation baseball team jumped out to an early 6-0 lead on Tuesday at the Harry K. Sickler Jr. Athletic Park, but once-beaten Altoona First awakened from their slumber to send home a dozen runners in the top of the sixth to drop Tyrone Legion to 5-4 on the season with a 17-7 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}