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MENOMINEE -- The Escanaba boys baseball team grabbed the lead in the fourth inning before breaking matters wide open with a huge fifth inning to defeat the Menominee Maroons 12-1 at Spies Field on Thursday.
"I'm happy as heck to play a baseball game, and I'm sure Menominee is too, regardless of the result today," Escanaba head coach Scott Hanson said. "It took us a little while to get the bats going, but that's to be expected."
With each team playing their first game in nearly two years, the game entered the top of the fourth inning scoreless until Nick Kolich looped a single to left field before scoring on a wild pitch by Zach Starzynski to give the Eskymos a 1-0 lead.
Three straight walks issued by Menominee's pitchers gave Escanaba a bases-loaded situation with two outs, and the Eskymos cashed in when Carter Berger issued a free pass to walk home Matt Zimmerman to make it a 2-0 game. With the bases still loaded, Riley Lamb blasted a two-RBI single to right field to bring home Tyler Lawson and Ben Johnson and give Escanaba a 4-0 advantage.
The Maroons answered back in the bottom of the fourth after Kennison Boivin legged out a grounder for a single before coming around to score thanks to an RBI groundout from Austin Malke as Menominee cut the deficit to three.
"It was great to be out here. A lot of these guys didn't get the chance to play last year, and our effort was decent tonight. I think there's a lot of things we can improve on, but that's really any game," Menominee head coach Jon Beyer said.
The wheels came off for Menominee's pitching staff in the fifth inning, with Casey Bray scoring on an RBI grounder by Zimmerman while Berger issued three balls to load the bases with no outs.
Ben Powell relieved Berger but was unable to fare much better, giving up a two-RBI blast by Colin Arnt to make it an 8-1 contest. With the score 11-1, Kolich slapped a single that split the gap between left and center field to bring home Lamb and push the Eskymos lead to 12-1.
The Maroons had one final chance to keep the game going in the bottom of the fifth, but three straight groundouts allowed Escanaba to move to 1-0.
Menominee had several chances to score runs early in the game but went a combined 1 for 7 with runners in scoring position through the first three innings.
"Timely hitting is something that we lack," Beyer said. "We just couldn't come through when we had a couple of guys on third base."
Lamb pitched three innings on the mound, striking out two and giving up two hit and three walks, before Johnson relieved him in the fourth. Johnson, a freshman who was called up the varsity squad shortly before the game, gave up two hits while striking out one.
"I thought our pitchers did well," Hanson said. "Riley started for us and had a little bit of control issues but really made the pitches that were necessary when he needed to. He did a great job of getting through three innings, and then I brought in a freshman (Johnson) because we were short four players due to quarantine. It says a lot about Ben that he pitched those two innings, and he did a super job coming in and throwing strikes."
Kolich had two hits with an RBI, while Lamb went 1-2 with two RBIs.
Starzynski pitched three innings, giving up one earned run while striking out four. Boivin was 1-2 with a run scored while Malke was 1-2 with an RBI.