Published: July 04, 2008 02:14 am            

Stillwater splits on Holt tourney's opening day

The Stillwater Majors ran into minor hiccups against the Woodward Travelers on Thursday night.

The Travelers won 6-4 in the 8 p.m. game of the Brad Holt Memorial American Legion Baseball Tournament at Couch Park.

Woodward’s big break and the first runs of the game came in the third.

Ethan Davis hit a single and stole second and third bases before Levi Lewis was walked.

With runners on first and third, Dylan Weber hit a double, driving home Davis and Lewis. Weber was balked from third to home before the inning was finished, giving the Travelers a 3-0 advantage.

Woodward scored three more runs in the fifth, but this time, the Majors answered.

Jonathan Fraizer started off the bottom of the fifth with a double and Kyle Childers brought him in with a single, breaking the Travelers’ chance of a shutout.

However, with the bases loaded later in the same inning, three consecutive Majors were sent back to the dugout with fly balls to second, catcher and center field.

Down 6-1 in the bottom of the seventh, Stillwater made a run at the Travelers, with Wesley Brorson hitting a double to bring in two runs. He was later driven home to make the score 6-4.

Majors coach Todd Smalley said Stillwater wasn’t outmatched, it just didn’t capitalize on its chances.

“We had our opportunities to win that one,” he said. “If we’d have scored any runs in the inning when we had no outs and bases loaded, it would have been a different story, but come up empty, that’s the way it is.”

At the same time, Smalley said there were some cases where luck was simply against them.

“(Philip) Wilson hit the ball on the nose twice right at the center fielder; either one of those dropped, it’s a different ball game in the end,” he said.

Clay Hattey pitched until the middle of the seventh inning, when Smalley replaced him with Tanner Devine.

“Toward the end, I thought that (Smalley) made the right call,” Hattey said. “I was getting tired. I would have gone just as long as he needed me to, and I did go as long as he needed me to. Nothing I can really do about that, just go as long as he wants me.”

Brorson said they made a good run at it but a few bumps got the better of them.

“Just a few mistakes kind of got us out of it, but you can’t blame anything that happened in the last inning because you can look back and find things earlier in the game that you could have done different to win that ball game,” he said.

Brorson went on to make a guarantee about how the Majors play ball.

“One thing about our team is that we’ll never give up and always fight hard to the end,” he said. “That’s the one thing good about us is that we’ll bulldog and give it what we’ve got.”

Earlier in the afternoon, the Majors won their first game of the tournament, 5-4, against the Okmulgee Twins at 5:30 p.m. At noon, the Ada Braves beat the Twins 11-3 by run rule in five innings. At 2:30 p.m., Woodward beat the Braves, 9-5.

        

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