Seymour’s baseball team rallied for three runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to edge Columbus North 7-6 on Tuesday afternoon at American Legion Field.
North held leads of 1-0, 5-2 and 6-4, and Owls coach Jeremy Richey said he was pleased to see his team rally back each time.
“That’s a little bit more like what we expected,” he said. “We had a great conversation (Monday) about our approach and how we approach every game the same. We put some things together tonight offensively. We were a totally different team and that’s a lot more what we expected.”
The Bull Dogs took a 1-0 lead in the second when Cooper Trinkle hit a ball off the scoreboard in left field for a long home run.
The Owls scored two runs in the third with Alan Perry getting hit by a pitch, and Jorge Vega and Keenan Bohall hit back-to-back doubles to drive in the runs.
North combined four hits to score four runs in the fourth. Trinkle had the big blow with his second homer of the game, a two-run shot. It was his third home run in two days.
In the bottom of the fourth Seth Maki singled, Tyler Bloom walked, and Ryan Wieneke was safe on an error to load the bases. Perry and Satoshi Hirose hit sacrifice flies to drive in the runs.
With two out and nobody on in the sixth, Perry walked, Hirose doubled to score Perry, Luis Munoz walked and Vega doubled to drive in the final two runs.
Vega had three hits and two RBI, and Bohall had two hits and two RBI to lead the Seymour offense.
Hirose pitched the first four innings and Bloom pitched the last three.
“Our pitching was good. We were hoping to get another inning out of Sami (Hirose), but he battled and Tyler came in and battled,” Richey said.
“That’s a good team. They’ve got three Division I players. They’ve got a lot of kids that can play. The thing I’m most proud of when we gave something up we scored every inning they did expect one. They had runners on second and third (in the first) and didn’t get anything.
“The kids never game up. I think we might have found something from our talk (Monday) about what we want the image of this team to be. Any time we beat a Columbus North team, especially as talented as they are, it’s big for us.
North, ranked No. 5 in Class 4A, fell to 3-1, while the Owls are 2-1.
“I couldn’t be more proud of our kids,” Richey said. “We’ve got some tough-minded kids on this team. We’ve just got to make sure they stay tough-minded all the time. We can’t give in when something doesn’t go our way.
“I was really proud of Tyler. I got on to him early in the game for not keeping the ball in the infield and his response to that was tremendous. He was a bulldog on the mound. You could tell that seventh inning that he wanted it. ”