Puget sound Collegiate League baseball

Hawks Prairie Cardinals 4, Nisqually Silvers 1
Nisqually Silvers 15, Hawks Prairie Cardinals 3

The Nisqually Silvers, 0-5 in the regular season, held the Hawks Prairie Cardinals offense in check in game one of their doubleheader on Monday night at the RAC. Down 2-0 through five innings, the Silvers’ Kyle Ginter (Colorado State-Pueblo) singled and drove in Ryan Taylor (Olympic College) to cut the Cardinals lead to just one. But the Cards extended their lead by scoring two runs in the sixth and Eli Fulton (Clark College, Capital HS) got the final three outs to pick up the save and give the Silvers their sixth straight loss. Shimpie Sato (Skagit Valley College) pitched 5 2/3 innings and gave up one earned run on six hits to get the win and Chandler Tracy (Saint Martin’s) went 2-for-3 with an RBI for the Cardinals.

In game two, the Silvers gave up a run in the first and two more runs in the third inning and hopes for breaking their losing streak looked bleak. But in the fifth inning, the Silvers showed some life when they scored a run on a Brad Fairweather (University of Hawaii-Hilo) ground out. In the seventh, on the verge of losing their seventh straight game, Tanner Romo (Everett CC) was hit by a pitch, Jordan Falcon (New Mexico Highlands U) doubled moving Romo to third, and Romo scored and Falcon moved to third on a passed ball and the Cardinal lead was cut to 3-2. Fairweather then drove in his second run on a ground out and tied the game at 3-3.

Then, the unexpected happened. The Silvers sent 18 batters to the plate in the eighth inning and scored 12 runs on seven hits, six walks, and three errors. In the eighth alone, both Brandon Evans (Colorado State-Pueblo) and Cory Bassi (Saint Martin’s) had two hits with two RBI and two runs scored. Both Evans and Bassi went 3-for-5 overall and Falcon went 2-for-4 with two runs scored and an RBI. The Cardinals used five pitchers in the long eighth inning.

Ian Buckles (George Fox) gave up three earned runs over seven innings to pick up the win for the Silvers and, with the pressure off, Andrei Jankanish (Saint Martin’s) pitched a scoreless bottom of the eighth to secure the Silvers’ first win of the regular season.