By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

STAYTON, Ore.–  The season has finally kicked off for the Post 58 Crushers after back-to-back rains outs postponded their first action of the Summer, while the Post 20 Dirtbags of Monmouth were figuring out what they have in a nice little icebreaking contest Monday evening at Regis High School.

For the Dirtbags, who have enough for two squads this year, split up their squad Monday.  Half went to play the West Salem D1 baseball team while the other half played the Crushers down Highway 22.  After a slow start, Dallas sophomore Liam Hale entered the game in the third inning and had cooled the bats of the Crushers down over the three innings he pitched Monday. The Dragons pitcher struck out one and only allowed two hits, knowing that this summer will help him like it will with his teammates playing alongside of him moving into the season ahead.

“I think we did good.  It was all the defense, making plays and not that many errors…we played good,” Hale said.  “It’s a lot of experience.  I’ll get a lot of experience from this for next year at Dallas.”

West Salem’s Jaebin Sotelo collected two hits to lead the Dirtbags, who had five hits total in the game.    

Post 58 saw Cascade’s Caleb Boyles go the first four innings, striking out three before Silverton’s Aiden Goff took over for the final three innings, contributing four more strikeouts in the game.  The Crushers bats produced 11 hits with Regis’ Tanner Manning and the Foxes Robbie Brockamp each having two hits apiece as the squad heads to Eugene on Tuesday for a doubleheader with the defending Triple-A State Champions in the Emerald Challengers.  The Challengers were called the Eugene Challengers last season.

“It’s good playing with the guys for the first time since we’ve been rained out over the weekend.  It was good to see that we got a lot of guys that can play a lot of different positions.  It’s nice to have a solid team all-around and the sticks were going good.  It was an all-around good game,” said Boyles.  “It was a good icebreaker to see them.  They threw decently well, but tomorrow will definitely be a challenge…we’ll see how the guys adjust to it..”

Photos By Jeremy McDonald