The Baker University baseball team has had its fair share of close games this season and its doubleheader against defending Heart of America Athletic Conference champion Culver-Stockton College would be no different.
Baker got out of the gate quickly against Culver-Stockton with a leadoff triple from senior Steven Stewart. Stewart then came home after an error by C-SC’s second baseman.
“As a team, we’ve actually done really well this year getting on the board in the first inning,” Stewart said.
That would be the only run of the game for BU, but that would be all it needed to defeat Culver-Stockton. C-SC left 10 runners on base, but could not get any runs against senior Chris Cummins as he went on to throw a complete game shutout to give Baker a 1-0 win.
“(Culver-Stockton) forced me to throw more pitches than I’m used to throwing, so in that respect, it was more difficult,” Cummins said.
In game two, Baker got on the scoreboard first again when Stewart came in to score after a bases-loaded walk to junior Justin Lane. Culver-Stockton answered, however, with two runs in the bottom of the first inning to take a 2-1 lead.
The score would remain 2-1 until the top of the fifth inning when Baker took a 4-3 advantage after RBI singles from senior Joey Orozco, junior Bryan Kindle and sophomore Josh Zach.
C-SC would cut BU’s lead to 4-3 in the bottom of the sixth, but Baker plated two insurance runs to go up 6-3 entering the bottom of the seventh.
Culver-Stockton did not go quietly as it quickly pushed two runs across the plate and had the bases loaded with only one out in the bottom of the seventh inning. Senior Nathan Wheelock buckled down to strike out Zachary Gottman and got Jose Salas to fly out to right field to secure a 6-5 win for Baker.
“I went out and talked to (Wheelock) to see if he was alright and he said, ‘yes, I’ll be fine. I’ll get this game,’ and he had that confident look, so I told him, ‘okay, you’ve got to close this game out for us then,’ and he did a super job,” head coach Phil Hannon said.
The two victories improved Baker’s record to 8-2 in one-run games and pushed BU’s HAAC record to 9-5.
The Wildcats went on to play a non-conference doubleheader against Tabor College Tuesday at Sauder Field, but were swept by the Bluejays. Tabor won game one 10-3 and game two 11-4.
The ’Cats will gear up for doubleheaders against MidAmerica Nazarene University Friday and Saturday at Sauder Field, which Hannon thinks will be a big determining factor to if his team makes the playoffs.
“The last couple of years MidAmerica and us have been battling it out and this weekend isn’t going to be any different,” Hannon said.