For the Daily Journal
Edinburgh waited nearly two weeks to finally get on a baseball field. It will have to wait at least one more day to record a hit.
Hauser ace Sam Meek struck out 14 and tossed a six-inning no-hitter Thursday to lead the Class A No. 6 Jets to a 12-0 win against Edinburgh in the Mid-Hoosier Conference baseball opener for both teams.
The score wasn’t nearly as lopsided as it looked. But key hits by the Jets, one costly error and, yes, that no-hitter, combined to make it a rough start for the home team.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery“A lot of people will see that score and think that it was a blowout, but it really wasn’t,” Edinburgh coach Jason Burton said. “There were three key moments in the game where we set ourselves up to get out of an inning and we didn’t make those plays. Two runs here, three runs there and that created quite an issue for us.”
Hauser (2-1, 1-0) started the game with a bang. Sean Miller drilled the first pitch he saw off the center-field fence for a double and a batter later, Trey Johnson hammered a home run to left for a 2-0 lead.
Edinburgh pitcher Zach Murphy settled down to strike out the final two batters of the first and fanned seven through four innings. But an RBI double by Parker Eickbush in the third and four unearned runs in the fourth put him behind 7-0.
“Zach is a very talented pitcher, especially at the 1A level. He’s going to give a lot of kids trouble who haven’t seen that velocity and that kind of movement,” Burton said. “They had a couple of kids in their lineup who hit the ball very well, and you expect that with any team. But when he was doing his job, we weren’t doing ours.”
Of course Murphy would have had to have thrown a perfect game to best Meek. The lanky Hauser senior wasn’t perfect, but he used his curveball to devastating effect and allowed the Lancers to put only two balls in play through the first five innings.
“I wasn’t able to control the ball the way I wanted to but I was still able to be effective,” said Meek, who hit three batters and walked one. “I had some great defense behind me.”
Miller and Johnson collected three hits each to lead Hauser. Along with his homer, Johnson also had a triple and a double and drove in seven runs. Kameron Lawson added an inside-the-park home run in the sixth.
The two teams will return to action today in Hope for the second game of their home-and-home series.
