The Saint Paul Park Post 98 American Legion team took a one-run thriller from host St. Thomas Academy Sunday evening in Mendota Heights to wrap up the penultimate week of the regular season.
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The Saint Paul Park Post 98 American Legion team took a one-run thriller from host St. Thomas Academy Sunday evening in Mendota Heights to wrap up the penultimate week of the regular season.
Saint Paul Park scored the winning run in the eighth inning to edge the hosts 8-7.
Park was in control most of the game, leading 3-0 after three and 5-3 after six innings. But St. Thomas pushed across four runs in a big seventh inning to tie the game at 7-up.
“We came out with some energy,” said shortstop/pitcher Boston Weidner. “Our energy has been down lately. That was a good game to get it back. We came out hitting the ball and took advantage of their mistakes.”
Park then scored twice in the seventh and won it with two singles and a long fly in the eighth.
Anson Dockter singled with one out and came in to score on a game-winning hit to deep left by Tyler Schwartz in the eighth inning to give St. Paul Park the victory.
“I thought we executed really well, we capitalized on their mistakes and we had a couple clutch hits and played good defense,” said Saint Paul Park manager Dan Harrison. “That’s going to win for us. We had couple guys, David Rolf came in, hasn’t played for a couple of weeks -- being out on an injury – came in and threw strikes for us. So that was good.”
It was a good win for the Post 98 team, which started the season 8-1, but has struggled a bit in late June and early July. With the win, Saint Paul Park improved to 11-7.
“It’s been a lot of ups and downs,” said Weidner. “We had a big win streak then we’ve lost to some teams we should have beat. But it was nice to get back in the win column.
“We’ve dropped a couple in a row and we came back against a really good team and that’s what we do,” said Harrison. “We sit there and when we play good baseball we’re going to sit there and beat teams.”
“We came out with some energy,” said shortstop/pitcher Boston Weidner. “Our energy has been down lately. That was a good game to get it back. We came out hitting the ball and took advantage of their mistakes.
“We played as a team,” said Saint Paul Park’s Justin Waterman. “I thought that was the big one. We played well, no errors, fielded the ball well, hit the ball well and stayed in and fought to the end.
“It does feel good. The whole team feels good,” added Waterman. “We’re laughing, we’re having fun and it was a good win for us.”
The Legion team has two games this week in the final week of the regular season. St. Paul Park plays at East Ridge Thursday at 5 p.m., then hosts Forest Lake Friday at Cottage Grove in a game starting at 4 p.m. The Legion seeding meeting is Saturday, followed by the sub-state tournament in Eagan July 20-23.
