The Saint Mary’s Tiger Baseball team has been heating up the diamond in advance of district competition. The weekend had the Tigers playing 1-A Merryville and 3-A Westlake after dropping a tough loss to 5-A Benton in early week action. The Friday Merryville game had Payne Williams on the mound with Jeffery Townsend behind the plate.
The starting lineup included Patrick Vienne on first, Mixon Bankston on second, Grahme Fidelak at short stop and Slaughter on third. The outfield had Bienvenu in right, Ethan Busby in center and Noah Heard in left. The Panther’s lead off action with a single. The laydown bunt that follows is miss played and the runner is safe. A sac fly advances a runner to third and then William’s strikes out two. No runs on two hits and two stranded in the first inning.
Williams leads off with a base on balls then steals second. Busby lines out to third for first out. Williams steals third and then scores on a wild pitch. Vienne sends one deep over the fence to score another run. Slaughter reaches on a single to the SS by beating out the throw to first. He advances to third on a single up the middle by Bienvenu. Runners on the corners as the Panthers get out the inning giving up two runs. Williams sits down the Panther batters in order to start the second inning.
Jeffery Townsend starts the bottom of the frame reaching base after being hit by pitch. That event started a flurry of scoring in the inning. Seven runs cross the plate in the bottom of the second giving the Tigers a 9-0 lead. Williams repeats the second inning performance sitting down the side. Three up, three down as Saint Mary’s comes to the plate with the lead off hitter, Williams. He hits a lead off triple.
A double by Ethan Busby is next scoring one. Vienne singles scoring Busby and the Tigers are racking up the runs. Five runs score in the bottom of the inning. Leading 14-0 in the top of the fourth, St. Mary’s goes through a couple of pitchers who give up four runs. Noah Heard finally ends the inning and the game on soft grounder back to the mound that he tosses to first for the final out.
The 10-run rule takes down another Tiger opponent.
