Weather in the mid-40s and continuous wind gusts didn’t keep the MSU baseball team off the diamond Sunday afternoon.
The Spartans were divided into two teams, creating the Green/Gray World Series. In Sunday’s game one, the green team used a late offensive explosion to pick up the 13-9 victory at Kobs Field.
But the afternoon of America’s pastime wasn’t just about focusing on winning, it was in preparation for the actual season. And of course, the players said playing baseball in October is always refreshing.
“It can’t get much better than this,”senior second baseman Charlie Braun said. “It’s a bit chilly, but we had a good time today.”
It was the first game-like atmosphere the team had been put in, but Braun liked the head-to-head matchup.
“We’ve just been scrimmaging lately, and this is just a little added bonus,” he said. “It gave us a little more competition, and it was more serious.”
The game started off very serious with zeros filling the scoreboard through three innings. The Gray team struck first in the bottom of the fourth when sophomore pitcher Tim Day laced a single between short and third. The next hitter, senior outfielder Brett Wattles drove a fastball deep over the right field fence to give the Gray squad a 3-0 lead.
The Green squad’s bats came alive and made a game out of it.
In the top of the fifth, Braun pounded a two-run double to right, cutting the deficit to 3-2. The next batter, sophomore catcher Erik Morris, roped a single to left, scoring two more runners to give the Green team a 4-3 lead.
Until the eighth, the teams were using their defenses to pace the game. That soon changed.
The Green team put up a five-spot in the top of the eighth. It started when junior infielder Scott Koerber launched a 400-foot dinger over the scoreboard in left-center field.
Freshman infielder Alan Cattrysse laced a double with the bases loaded to score two. The next hitter, Braun, doubled as well, scoring another two runners and extending the Green lead to 10-5.
The Gray team scored two runs in the bottom half of the eighth, but those were erased in the top of ninth, thanks to the bat of sophomore Jim Duffy. The catcher used a gust of wind to put a ball just over the fence in right. Cattrysse and Braun each added an RBI single to give the Green three more insurance runs.
Redshirt freshman Oliver Wolcott roped a two-run homer to right in the latter half of the ninth to cut the lead to 13-9, but his side wouldn’t get any more offensive help.
“It’s a good time of the year for baseball,” MSU manager Ted Mahan said. “It’s the coldest day we’ve had, but it was another good day of work.”
The Spartans will go back to work 3:30 p.m. tomorrow at Kobs Field for the second game of the best-of-three series.
