Lawton sweeps past Ada Braves

Bob Forrest Sports Writer

Ada July 21, 2008 04:45 pm

— The Ada Legion Post 72 Braves seemed to have a post-Post 12 hangover in Sunday’s doubleheader with the Lawton Colonels.
Less than 18 hours after wrapping up a marathon three-hour, 24-1 rout of the Post 12 Ruffnecks from Putnam City at Oklahoma City University Saturday night in which they recorded seasons highs in runs, hits (22) and extra-base hits (10), the Braves picked up where they had left off in a Game 1 rained out in Lawton Thursday night. But their bats apparently stayed in Oklahoma City.
Ada and Lawton resumed play in Sunday’s opener tied, 1-1, in the bottom of the second inning (the Colonels were the home team for Game 1), then the Braves (27-7) managed just two hits the rest of the way off Lawton’s Michael Alger in a 7-1 loss. In the nightcap, Ada left 13 men on base and gift-wrapped a pair of crucial fifth-inning runs en route to dropping a 5-4 decision.
“They did the little things better than we did,” Ada coach Travis Graham said after seeing his club match its longest losing streak of the season with Sunday’s two defeats. “And we didn’t take advantage of our opportunities.”
The Braves’ three weekend contests were the start of a busy stretch to wind up the regular season. Ada will face the Edmond Stars this afternoon at the Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City (game time approximately 3 p.m.) in the opener of the Justin Sullivan Memorial Tournament before returning home to close the 2008 home schedule with a three-way Tuesday against Claremore and Durant. Tournament action resumes later in the week with games at OU, Southern Nazarene and Putnam City West High School.
Pool play in the Sullivan Memorial winds up Saturday, with the top two teams in each pool advancing to Sunday’s championship round. Ada opens the postseason on the road in a zone tournament in Edmond against the Stars and Ruffnecks on Thursday, July 31.
Game 2
Lawton 5, Ada 4
The Braves missed one big opportunity after another against Lawton starter Nathan McCall, who allowed eight hits and walked six in his six innings on the mound and left runners in scoring position in every inning.
Ada starter Tyler Carter (1-1) surrendered four hits in the third, but, because of two outstanding defensive plays by right fielder Spencer Penrod in that inning, carried a 1-0 lead into the fourth before Lawton (27-18) scored three times — on a single by Josh Nelson, an RBI double by Casey Clark and a two-run homer by Josh Nunn — to take the lead for good. Then the Colonels scored what proved to be the decisive runs in the fourth while putting just one ball in play in the inning.
Kyle Martzall, who had relieved Carter following Nunn’s homer and avoided further trouble in the third, struck out the final three batters he faced in the fourth — but not before walking two, hitting another and uncorking two wild pitches — the second of which plated Lawton’s final run.
Gene Nations drew a five-pitch leadoff walk in the fourth, he moved to second on an errant pickoff attempt by Martzall (Ada’s only error in the game), and he advanced to third on a wild pitch. Quay Grant then pounded a 2-2 pitch into the ground and saw the high hopper turned into an infield hit when it caught the lip of the infield grass and kicked past Ada shortstop Dustin Ervin.
Nations scored easily on Grant’s single, and Grant scored an ugly second run in the inning on a hit batter, a walk and a wild pitch before Martzall struck out Clark, Nunn and Dillon Hargrove.
Ada trimmed the deficit to 5-2 when Jon Gray led off with a walk and scored from second when Nations misplayed J. P. Maples’s single to left for one of four Lawton errors in the contest, and the Braves added another unearned run in the sixth. Maples reached on an error leading off that inning and scored on Tyler Porter’s clutch two-out single to right.
Grant relieved McCall to start the seventh and retired the first two batters he faced before issuing a two-out walk to Brett Walls and surrendering a run-scoring double to right-center by J. P. Maples. The rally — and the game — ended, however, with Maples at third when Grant struck out Robert Thomas on four pitches.
In addition to getting the save, Grant also had three of Lawton’s nine hits off four Ada pitchers. Maples, who was 4-for-8 in the doubleheader from his leadoff spot in the lineup, also had three hits in the nightcap to pace a 10-hit attack.
Although the Braves scored late to make it close, the story of the game was Ada’s inability to cash in on chances throughout the contest.
Maples was picked off second base after leading off the first with a double, and, although the Braves scored later in the inning on infield singles by Thomas and Porter and the first Lawton error of the game on Ervin’s liner to center, they missed out on a potential big inning when Ervin was thrown out at second base attempting to stretch his good fortune. Ada also loaded the bases with one out in both the second and fifth innings but failed to score either time.
Penrod — an Ada High product — personally short-circuited a potential Lawton rally in the third. Hargrove and Joey Koebelen led off with singles, but Penrod threw out Hargrove attempting to advance to third on Zack Zukerman’s fly ball to right, and the former Cougar standout ended the inning when he nailed Koebelen with a perfect throw to the plate after fielding Grant’s one-hop line-drive single.
Game 1
Lawton 7, Ada 1
Alger, who gave up a leadoff double to Maples and a sacrifice fly to Garan Qualls in the first inning at Lawton Thursday, didn’t surrender a hit Sunday until Riley Keith singled to center with one out in the sixth. The Lawton righty promptly picked Thomas (running for Keith) off first base, then he struck out Qualls to end the inning, and he worked around a two-out walk to Porter and Matt Johnson’s single in the seventh to wrap up his sparkling complete-game effort.
The Colonels, who had scored a run in the second inning on back-to-back doubles by Will Reinke and Clark when the game was rained out four days earlier, took the lead for good when Zukerman singled with two outs in the second to plate Clark and make it 2-1.
Lawton added four runs in the third off Qualls (5-1), who surrendered doubles to Nations, Josh Dawson and Hargrove in the inning and was also hurt by the first of three Ada errors in the game. Ada’s final error paved the way for another unearned run — this one off reliever Jon Owens — in the fourth to wrap up the scoring.
Six of Lawton’s nine hits in the opener were doubles, including two from Dawson and one each from Nations, Clark, Reinke and Hargrove.

Braves pound PC Ruffnecks
OKLAHOMA CITY — It probably wouldn’t be accurate to say the Ada Legion Post 72 Braves didn’t break a sweat in their 24-1 victory over the outmanned Putnam City Post 12 Ruffnecks Saturday night at Oklahoma City University.
Ada hitters spent most of the 200-minute, seven-inning marathon running around the bases, and Braves ace Jonathan Gray went the distance, throwing 118 pitches to improve to 5-0 on the season. Defensively, Ada committed one error — leading to an unearned run in the first inning that snapped Gray’s streak of consecutive scoreless innings at 18 — but turned a couple of nifty double plays and got a spectacular night from catcher Riley Keith, who picked off two Ruffneck baserunners and threw out another attempting to steal.
With the victory, the Braves improved to 27-5 heading into a huge final week of the regular season. After Sunday’s home doubleheader with Lawton, Ada was due to play three games in five days — starting with Monday’s opener at the Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City against the Edmond Stars — at the Justin Sullivan Memorial Tournament, with a three-way at Cougar Field Tuesday (first game at 4 p.m.) against Claremore and Durant thrown in for good measure.
Gray, who won’t be available again until Friday (when he starts against the host Oklahoma Ambassadors at the Sullivan Tournament in an 11 a.m. contest) because of a family vacation, saved the rest of an Ada pitching staff that figures to be stretched during the remainder of the week with his longest mound effort of the season Saturday night.
A junior-to-be at Chandler High School, Gray — coming off a string of 11 straight scoreless innings in Ada victories over the Durant Legion squad and the Durant A’s in his previous two starts — wasn’t as sharp against the Ruffnecks as he had been in his last four appearances, but something close to his best was plenty good enough. He struck out 10 (including the side in the seventh), allowed just five hits and, although he hit two batters and walked another, he made pitches when he needed them to keep Putnam City (16-18) off the board.
After a leadoff double by Peter Brunette in the second inning, Gray hit Kyle Myers with a 3-2 pitch, but Keith picked Brunette off second base for the first out in the inning and used a snap throw to first to get Myers for the third out after receiving a 2-2 breaking pitch that struck out Jeremy Hey.
In the fourth, B. J. Hartis led off with a single for the Ruffnecks, and Gray hit cleanup hitter Adrian Dominguez, but the young Ada pitcher hustled to cover first base and take the relay from shortstop J. P. Maples on a ground ball Braves first baseman Garan Qualls snagged in the hole to start an unusual 3-6-1 double play. Gray then struck out Myers to end the inning.
The Braves provided Gray with more than enough offense, pounding out a season-high 22 hits — including three triples and seven doubles — off five Putnam City pitchers. Tyler Porter and Kyle Martzall had four hits apiece, with Porter doubling in runs in the first and third and lining a triple to left to drive home Ada’s final two runs in a five-run seventh.
Martzall was also 4-for-5 and scored four times in addition to driving home two runs with a double into the right field corner in Ada’s three-run second inning and plating another run with his second two-bagger of the game — this one to left-center — in the seventh.
Maples tripled home two runs in the Braves’ six-run fifth inning and also had an RBI single in the third, when Ada scored eight of its 15 unearned runs in the game with the help of four of the Ruffnecks’ seven errors on the night; Qualls was 3-for-6 with an RBI triple in the Braves’ two-run first inning and run-scoring singles in the second and seventh; Keith was 2-for-5 with a two-run single in the fourth and an RBI hit in the fifth; Jeremy Stein came off the bench to go 2-for-2 with an RBI infield hit in the fifth and a double in the seventh; and Matt Johnson drove in three runs, including the final two in the fourth with a double to the wall in left field.

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