MURRAY, Utah — The McComb Bosox were juggling a lot on Wednesday in their final game of pool play in the Babe Ruth World Series.
A dearth of fresh or eligible arms forced some shakeups in the field, plus a sixth and seventh inning to forget turned McComb’s 7-3 lead into a 12-8 loss against Harris Township, Ind.
“As painful as that loss is,” McComb manager Richard Cothern said, “our original goal was to advance out of pool play. It’ll be as a No. 3 seed, but we advanced.”
McComb finished pool play with a 6-2 record. The BoSox will play Tallahassee, Fla. tonight at 6:30 in the first round of the single-elimination championship bracket.
While advancing was most important, the loss certainly could have been different. McComb put three runs on the board in the first and third innings and another in the second.
Tanner Whittington singled in two runs in the first and scored on a hit-and-run when Landon Nettles beat out an infield single.
McComb stole four bases in the first inning, and after Matthew Artigues reached base and promptly swiped second, Harris Township swapped out its catcher. Ryan Cothern singled in Artigues, but McComb was limited on the basepaths after the switch.
Indiana scored three runs in the third inning after two outs on three straight singles that fell in just over the infielders’ heads.
McComb struck back in the bottom of the inning. Mikel Jenkins led off with a triple to deep right field. He scored on Landon Nettles’ sacrifice fly before Bailey Warren doubled over the center fielder’s head to score Whittington.
Warren came around after Philip Strawn reached on a popup that was dropped by the third baseman.
With a 7-3 lead, however, McComb wasn’t able to finish off the final few innings.
Indiana sent 11 batters to the plate in the sixth inning and McComb went through three pitchers to get the three outs. Four walks and a hit batter put plenty of runners on base for Indiana’s batters to take their first lead of the game at 8-7.
“When their batters jumped on our pitching, we tried to ride it out, but they took advantage,” Cothern said. “We didn't have enough fresh arms to be able to get our pitchers off the mound when they got hit.”
McComb fought back and tied the game in the bottom of the inning, but the Bosox had to juggle things once again.
Dustin Brock drove in Ryan Cothern with a sacrifice fly after Austin Smith doubled him to third.
Smith then rounded third on a grounder he thought was through the hole between third and short. Indiana’s shortstop got to the ball and threw to third instead of first.
Smith kept running heading for home, but the third baseman tossed to the catcher, and Smith was had.
But Smith, on the edge of the home base cutout, slid late and the catcher applied the tag. Smith was ejected from the game for not avoiding contact and McComb had to shuffle things around to cover the hole at shortstop.
With two outs and the bases loaded in the seventh inning, infield grounders misplayed by the BoSox led to four more Township runs. McComb failed to score in the bottom of the inning.
“Errors at critical times and ineligible or tired arms kept us from winning,” Cothern said.
