By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SALEM, Ore.–  Tuesday’s game at West Salem against the West Salem D2 was a unique challenge for the Post 58 Single-A Crushers:  To comeback and to finish.

They overcame a slow start, giving West Salem a 4-0 going into the fourth inning as they battled through the heat of the day.  But starting with the top half of the fourth inning, things began to fall in the favor of the Crushers.

Staying within themselves, they scored three runs in the third to make it a 4-3 game.  Logan Hendrickson (Silverton), found his groove in the bottom half of that inning and continued that through the fifth before Brody Panuke (Kennedy) took the reins with a strong sixth to let their offense continue to cook.  A run in the fifth and five more followed over the course of the sixth and seventh innings allowed the Post 58 Single-A Crushers to take a 9-4 lead going into the bottom half of the seventh inning.

“Just kind of that mindset of being aggressive and attack on every opportunity we can.  We can’t let opportunities slip away and just cheering on our team, when we get the dugout going we always make good plays,” said Hendrickson.

But another opportunity to get better, to improve for this squad, presented itself in the final three outs of the game.  The West Salem D2 Titans put pressure on the Crushers to close out the win.

The squad might’ve been made up of underclassmen, but before the Post 58 Single-A Crushers knew it, it was a 9-7 ball game with two outs on the board.  Panuke pointed towards McKay’s Jeremy Toy in being the caltius, the glue in keeping them together through that tough time as they closed out the 9-7 victory going into their Friday doubleheader with the Roseburg Doc Stewart’s. 

“Jeremy, he helped a lot, our catcher.  He helped me too focus up,” said Panuke, who struck out four in two innings. “It felt good, the Doc Stewart’s are pretty good.  We’ll have to fix up some things, throwing strikes, errors, we’ll really have to fix up some things.”

Panuke and Toy each collected two hits each for the Crushers.  Panuke and Miguel Martinez each drove in 2RBI’s, Bryan Felbon also drove in a run in a run in the game.

For the Titans, Brandon Rowell and Kellen East each struck out four pitching and Andrew Blair drove in 2RBI’s.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald