On Tuesday, a young Franklin team tried in vain to come from behind against county and Mid-State Conference rival Whiteland. Twenty-four hours later, the Grizzly Cubs finished the job — twice.
After the host Warriors answered Franklin’s seven-run sixth inning with eight runs in the bottom of the frame, the visitors regrouped to score six more times in the top of the seventh before holding on for a logic-defying 16-14 triumph on Wednesday evening.
“We don’t quit, which is something I’m proud of from this team,” Franklin coach Jeremy McKinney said. “We battled until the end. We could have tucked our tail between our legs there and just said, ‘Hey, we’re done’ … but we didn’t do that.”
Cade Petty started the seventh inning with a walk for the Grizzly Cubs (4-4, 2-2) before Landen Basey, Nash Netter and Trevor Launonen were all hit by pitches, pushing one run across to get Franklin within a run at 12-11. With two out, Netter scored the tying run on a wild pitch and Wyatt Mitchell then reached on an error that brought in Launonen and Blake Smythe, putting the Cubs on top by two. Owen Bullington drove Mitchell in with a base hit and later made it 16-12 when Basey was hit by another pitch (yes, two in one inning).
Whiteland (6-3, 3-3) didn’t concede defeat, cutting that four-run deficit in half on a two-run homer by Blake Riddle, but Launonen — the fourth Franklin pitcher of the night — worked around a one-out error to finally finish it off.
“We started to give it away to them,” Basey said. “We passed them the baton and then they passed it back to us, and we just ran with it after.”
Down 10-4 after what looked like a knockout punch from the Grizzly Cubs in the top of the sixth, the Warriors took advantage of several fielding miscues to keep the sixth swallow up scorebook space, sending 14 hitters to the plate against three different Franklin relievers.
Drew Helton reached on a fielder’s choice with the bases loaded and one out to bring one run home, and a pair of dropped fly balls in the next two at-bats allowed Maalik Perkins, Peyton Dickens and courtesy runner Dillon Brown to score, cutting the deficit to two runs. After a walk reloaded the bags, Connor Grismer — hitless in his first three at-bats, including the first out of the inning — tied the game up with a two-run single. An error and a walk plated Isaac Phegley with the go-ahead run and filled the bases again, and Dickens drew an RBI free pass for the last run of the frame.
Eight runs on just three hits — and it could have been more if Launonen hadn’t come in and struck out Helton with the bases loaded.
Basey had delivered the big blow in the Franklin half of the sixth, coming up with a two-run double that gave his team a 5-4 advantage. Jesse Kaster also had a two-RBI hit in the inning, while Carsten Bland, Smythe and Bullington also had run-scoring singles, the last of those giving the Grizzly Cubs what had seemed like a safe six-run cushion.
Franklin’s sixth-inning breakout negated what had been a nice Whiteland rally to take a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the fifth. David Collins led off with a single and advanced to third on a double down the left-field line by Perkins. Dickens, who had struck out his first two times up, plated both runners with a game-tying double and then took an extra base when an attempt to get Perkins at the plate left third uncovered. Those extra 90 feet proved crucial when the next batter, Helton, flied out deep enough to right field to allow Dickens to score the go-ahead run.
The Grizzly Cubs scraped together single runs in each of the first three innings after putting the leadoff man on base each time against Helton. Basey led off the game with a base hit, moved to second on a Bland sacrifice bunt, took third on a wild pitch and scored on a single up the middle by Launonen. A two-out single by Bland drove in Bullington in the second inning, and Kaster’s RBI single in the third brought Launonen across.
Whiteland — which escaped further damage early by throwing out a runner at home in the second and getting an inning-ending double play in the third — finally got to Franklin starter Braeden Burton for one run in the fourth. Jordan Palmer drove a one-out double to the wall in right center and courtesy runner Bryce Tallman scored on a Riddle single — but with runners on second and third, Burton struck out the next hitter and Kaster hauled in a Grismer fly at the right-field wall.
Finishing this game off after squandering a pair of leads — and letting some other previous losses slip away as well — should do wonders for the collective psyche of the Grizzly Cubs.
“It just shows that our team’s a fighting team,” Basey said. “We’re young, yeah, but we have a lot to improve, and we’re a good, young core; we’re going to be good in the next few years.”
Whiteland, meanwhile, will try to shake it off and move on to the next one.
“The nice thing is now, with games backed up and playing all the time, there’s not much time,” Warriors coach Scott Sherry said. “You go to practice tomorrow and shake it and move on. It’s over. It’s gone.
“You’re going to see them again, hopefully, in the sectional — and it’ll be another crazy game.”
Good luck topping this one.
