Perryville baseball Donald O’Keefe talked before the season, how he felt like his team could play a good brand of baseball.
He wanted to make it so that teams did not look forward to playing the Pirates.
That seems to be the sentiment this season.
Thanks to rain, Perryville played a doubleheader against DeSoto and showed its versatility in a sweep. Perryville got a dominating pitching performance in a 3-0 victory in game one and swung the bats well in an equally convincing 11-0 victory in game two.
The victories are the first in JCAA conference play for Perryville since April 2022.
In game one, junior Troy O’Keefe turned in a great pitching performance going 6 1/3 innings, gave up three hits with 13 strikeouts.
Logan Hoehn finished out the game with one strikeout.
The Perryville offense did just enough in game one to secure the win. Grant Smith and Caleb Triller drove in runs in the first inning and O’Keefe took over from there. He struck out the first five batters he faced and controlled the game from there.
The Perryville offense only had four hits themselves, but they were timely. Smith added another run with an RBI double in the fifth for what proved to be the final score.
Perryville had no such problems in game two.
The Pirate offense exploded for seven runs in the third inning. Perryville sent 12 batters to the plate in the inning. O’Keefe drove in the first run of the game , but Smith broke it open with a two-RBI single after a wild pitch scored a run, to make it 4-0. Hoehn, Adam Green, and Waylon Huber all drove in runs to increase the margin.
Perryville scored four more in the fifth inning on RBI hits from Barrett Wheeler and Smith, who had four RBI in the game.
Perryville had 10 hits in the game, and Wheeler, O’Keefe, Smith and Fritsche each had a pair.
Huber pitched well going five scoreless innings, while he gave up two hits with three strikeouts.
