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Glen Strandberg
Sports Editor
Good or bad, it doesn’t take long for a team to have a new outlook. When the Forest Lake baseball team downed White Bear Lake on April 21, the Rangers were sitting on a two-game winning streak, with a trip to a beatable Park squad on Wednesday.
That afternoon got off to a promising start, as Forest Lake was up 2-0 after two innings.
The outlook looked grim, however, when the Rangers gave up five runs in the bottom of the fourth, in what would become a 5-3 Wolfpack victory.
“It’s kind of been the way our year has gone. We took the lead early and then we gave the lead back to them late,” head coach Brian Raabe said.
“We had some very costly errors, we had some walks, and at the end we didn’t have enough timely hitting and that equalled a loss.”
Pat Larson took the L, and he was replaced by Travis Evgen, who pitched three innings in relief.
The defeat dropped the Rangers to 3-6 on the year, with the hope of rediscovering last week’s positive outlook against Mounds View on Monday evening.
“You gotta play a complete game — you have to play a full seven innings,” Raabe said.
“We seem to be playing a full five or six innings, and then we’ll have a little bit of something that won’t go our way and that parlays into a big inning. And usually it’s been too much for us to overcome.”
After taking on Mounds View, the boys host Woodbury on Wednesday night and Hastings on Friday.
Monday’s loss
Undefeated Mounds View left Schumacher Field on Monday night with a chilly, 4-0 win over the Rangers, in a game that looked eerily similar to Forest Lake’s other defeats.
Three errors on defense had Raabe as frustrated as he’s ever been, as did an enormous missed opportunity on offense.
Down 1-0 in the bottom of the fourth inning, Forest Lake had the bases loaded with no outs, but failed to score a single run.
Mounds View came back in the fifth to make it 2-0, and added two more in the top of the seventh for the 4-0 shutout.
Box Score
Mustangs 100 010 2—4 10 0
Rangers 000 000 0—0 6 3
Freed, Harris (7) and Wessberg; Zidar and Evgen. W—Freed (2-0). L—Zidar.
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