Glen Strandberg
Sports Editor

The way the Legion baseball team staggered into the playoffs with six straight defeats, loss number seven was beginning to look like the summer was coming to a rapid conclusion — pack up the equipment and get ready for school.

Park and its No. 12 seed would finish up on a 4-1 victory on Friday, July 27 in the best-of-three series, which sent the teams up to No. 21 seed Forest Lake on Saturday.

A nice effort by pitcher Brady Banse was wasted in the opening loss, as his offensive teammates worked their way to a total of 13 strikeouts.

“We swung at a lot of bad pitches and it cost us,” head coach Kale Henry said, “and that was kind of the difference between that game and the next two games.”

Saturday would have Trip Schultz on the mound, and while he was throwing one of the better games that Henry has ever seen from Schultz over four years, the O responded with better at bats in a 12-1 breeze.

Forest Lake Post 225 drew some walks, and then took advantage of those extra baserunners, with players like Kyle Young, Brent Kolbow, Travis Evgen, Schultz and Tom Fick all getting two hits a piece. Young had the highlight of the day with a walk-off dinger in the bottom of the eighth inning to complete the 10-run-limit win.

Now the series would move back to Park on Sunday, and Henry liked what he saw from his club.

“The third game is going to be a carbon copy,” he said, referring to Saturday’s victory. “Just a better mental approach to the game all the way around.”

This time it was Matt Zidar getting the start and he was absolutely brilliant in a 6-0 win.

“We pitched well all weekend, all of our guys pitched well,” Henry stated. “The big story was Matt being able to go all nine innings. He pitched the game of his life. That was a big pick-up for us.”

In the playoffs, the games are nine innings long, and according to Henry, Zidar showed command the whole way through. He changed speeds, moved the ball in and out, and kept the Park hitters off balance.

Park would give up 12 walks in this contest and Post 225 would begin to use those baserunners to pull away in the fifth inning.

Henry felt the game turned on Tom Fick’s at bat, where he battled his way for a bases loaded single that would score a run to make it 2-0. Schultz would follow with an RBI, Drew Cremisino would bring in a third run with a sacrifice fly and that was more than enough for Zidar.

The new deep threat in Young hit another eighth-inning homer — his second in two games — and closed the scoring for Forest Lake.

“When we play hard and we play focused baseball we can be pretty good,” Henry said.

The goal at the start of the summer is the District Tournament and that’s where Post 225 is now, with a Wednesday game against Mahtomedi in Burnsville/Apple Valley. If Forest Lake wins they play at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, but with a loss they go at 4 p.m.

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