AN EARLY ENDING FOR THE BLACKSOX
JEREMY WALTNER | PUBLISHER
A young team made up of a number of first-year amateur players with their eyes fixed on the state tournament saw their season end earlier than they had hoped when the Freeman town team lost an elimination game to Irene Sunday night, July 26.
Competing for a chance to play again this Thursday, when a ticket to state would be on line, the No. 6-seed Blacksox struggled on both the pitching mound and in the batter’s box against No. 7 Irene, falling to the Cardinals 16-3 in what ended up being an eight-inning game courtesy of the mercy rule.
“It just seemed like we were flat,” said player/manager Jake Weier. “Maybe we just weren’t ready to play; I don’t know.”
The loss may have felt particularly discouraging since Freeman was close to pulling off an upset against No. 3 Crofton, Neb., in the opening round of the tournament Friday night, July 24. Backed by ace pitcher Nate Broehm, the Blacksox trailed the Bluejays by just one run late in the game before coming up short in what ended up being a 4-2 final.
“It was a very close game,” said Weier. “We got out of some jams and had guys on base; we just didn’t get the timely hits.”
That put Freeman in the loser’s bracket opposite Irene, which dropped its first-round game on Friday to No. 2 and host-team Menno 13-8.
Things started well enough for the Blacksox Sunday night, with starting pitcher Andrew Kemper quickly striking out the first two batters of the game. But a two-out double followed by an RBI single plated the first run of the game and Freeman found itself down 0-1.
It only went downhill from there.
The Cardinals scored four runs on four hits off Kemper and took advantage of a Blacksox error to build a 5-0 lead, and then put up four more runs off just one hit against relief pitcher Trey Christensen to build a 9-0 lead just three innings into the game.
“It takes a lot to bounce back from something like that,” Weier said. “We just never got it going.”
Freeman’s third pitcher of the night, Jackson Fiegen, fared better, holding Irene scoreless through the middle innings, but the Cardinals put an exclamation point on Sunday’s nightcap with a seven-run eighth inning to move ahead 16-1. Two runs in the bottom of the eighth inning — one on a Tryg Aanenson sacrifice fly and other on a walk — weren’t enough to extend the game into a ninth inning and the contest ended by the 10-run mercy rule implemented after seven innings.
Freeman finished with six hits, which included hits by Aanenson in his first three at bats and a home run by Bailey Sage. And while the Blacksox had base runners early, including five runners left on in the first two innings, they couldn’t get the timely hit that might have kept the game closer and some momentum on Freeman’s side.
Irene starting pitcher Jamison Kleinsasser “was throwing average speed, just like we’ve been seeing all year — nothing overpowering,” Weier said. “We just didn’t hit.”
After the game, Weier said he told his team some good things happened this season, including a 4-1 win over the South Central League’s top team, Tabor, that capped the July 5 Independence Day celebration in Freeman.
Including the postseason, Freeman finished the 2020 season with a 7-18 record.
“The season didn’t end the way we wanted it to, but we had a lot of good things happen this season,” Weier said. “We saw a lot of growth and it sounds like everybody wants to come back next year, compete and get better.”
