by Dave DeMars
news@thenewsleaders.com
Despite two losses, the St. Joseph Joes will be going to the first round of the state tournament playing Maple Lake at Hamburg on Friday, Aug. 18.
In the regional playoff game at Hinckley, the Joes picked up a couple of injuries and that didn’t help their cause. Left-fielder Hunter Blommer pulled up lame with a pulled hamstring, and third baseman Brandon Bloch hurt his throwing shoulder.
With injuries to two players, the Joes got more bad news because center fielder Peter Nelson will be going to Bemidji State for orientation, and with the start of the college football program at St. John’s, catcher Ben Alvord is not playing baseball anymore, but rather chucking pigskins.
The Joes were able to draft two pitchers, Terry Caden from Nowthen, and Cameron Jurek from Foley, and so Schneider expects to have all regular-position players on the field.
Maple Lake is a former Class B team according to Schneider, so they are a pretty solid ball club with good pitching.
“It’s all about playing defense and small ball,” Schneider said. “Score first and play solid defense. We’ve got the pitching to get through this if we can stay a little healthier and recover from our losses. But anything can happen. You never know.”
Double whammy swamps Joes in regionals
Sartell Muskies 5, St. Joseph 0
The St. Joseph Joes lost two games in the regional playoffs at Hinckley this past weekend. On Saturday, Aug. 12. the Sartell Muskies found holes in the Joes’ bats as David Deminsky threw a no-hitter for nine innings and silenced the St. Joseph bats with whiffs of empty air. Final score was 5-0.
Muskie pitcher David Deminsky might have thrown a perfect game were it not for two walks he issued in the nine innings. Deminsky also struck out 13 in his tour de force.
Nobody expects to be the victim of a no-hitter, but it happens. Joes’ Coach Pat Schneider knows that baseball has its twists and turns and being no-hitted is one of those unfortunate events that happens even to good teams.
“Yeah – he threw a no-hitter against us,” Schneider said, “but I can’t say it was unexpected. Deminisky can do that to anybody. Yeah, he’s probably one of the top five pitchers in the state.”
But Schneider found the bright side of the loss if there is one. At least it’s over with.
Team 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E L Sartell Muskies 0 1 0 2 1 0 0 0 1 5 8 0 12 St. Joseph 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3
Joes lose a squeaker 6-5 in 10 innnings
After the thorough drubbing at the hands of Sartell, the St. Joseph Joes took on the Blue Devils of Mora on Sunday, Aug. 13. Second place would be determined by the outcome.
The Joes know baseball is a reflection of life. Bad things can happen to a good team just like bad things can happen to good people. The Joes are a good team, but the Blue Devils were the home team. And what happens often as not is the last team to bat wins the game. And the last team to bat on Sunday was the Blue Devils.
The Joes played Mora a couple of weeks ago on Aug. 5, and they won that game 5-4 in 10 innings. Yogi Berra once said, “It was deja vu all over again.” And that most aptly describes the 10-inning game the Joes played against Mora. The only difference was in the score. So much for deja vu.
“We kind of imploded in the third inning,” Schneider said. “We had a couple of errors and gave them three runs. They scored on a bases-loaded walk and being hit by a pitch. There were a lot of unearned runs that we gave them.”
Alex Kendall was on the mound for the Joes and he did yeoman’s service as he held the Blue Devils to a tie game for nine innings. Kendall threw 120 pitches, 87 for strikes. He walked three and struck out seven and allowed only five hits. Those are pretty stingy numbers. But a pitcher’s arm can only take so much abuse. So Jack Atkinson took over. Atkinson acquitted himself well, but with a runner on, it only took one hit to drive him home and break the 4-4 tie and put a big W in the column for Mora.
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Team 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 R H E L St. Joseph 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 5 12 5 13 Mora Blue Devils 0 4 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 6 4 4 7
Joey Atkinson goes high in the air to get an errant throw from the catcher as a Foley Lumberjack eats some dirt sliding into second base. Alex Kendall hustles in the background to get in position to back up the play.
St. Joseph’s Joe Stock (1) blocks the plate preventing the Foley Lumberjack from scoring. Despite some strong play by the Joes, they recently lost in a 13-inning marathon 4-2.
Last year the St. Joseph Joes made it to the Class C State Baseball tournament but were eliminated in the first round. This year they feel there is no reason why they shouldn’t go back and do better. Many of last year’s team members are members of this year’s team: (kneeling left to right) Joey Stock, Brock Cheely, Alex Kendall, Greg Anderson, Eric Vigil, Ethan Carlson and Willie Willats; and (standing) Brandon Bloch, Pat Schneider, Nathan Mohs, Ben Bierschied, Mike Ashwill, Jack Atkinson, Hunter Blommer, Tyler Mueller, Justin Barg, Zack Overboe and Ben Alvord.
