As the Chicago Cubs great Ernie Banks once said, “let’s play two.”
That’s exactly what the Perryville baseball team did on Monday afternoon as they took on both Chaffee and Delta in a doubleheader at Pirate Stadium.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better day to play baseball,” Perryville coach Donald O’Keefe said.
He couldn’t have asked for a better outcome from the two games either.
The Pirates edged a red-hot Chaffee team 4-1 and cruised past Delta 10-0 in game two.
With the pair of victories, the Pirates have qualed the number of victories the team had all of last season.
“It’s a very positive day,” O’Keefe said. “Every day we are trying to take a step in the right direction, a little bit at a time. We aren’t going to recreate Perryville baseball in one week.”
Perryville took down Chaffee, who entered the day at 9-1 on the season, with great pitching from senior Dane Lauck and timely hitting.
“They were rolling coming in,” O’Keefe said.
Lauck stopped Chaffee in their tracks going 5 2/3 innings, giving up three hits, one earned run, three walks and 12 strikeouts. At one point, Lauck struck out the first six batters he saw through two innings.
“I just want to throw strikes and have confidence in my defense that they are going to make plays behind me,” Lauck said of his day. “I try to pitch to contact, but if they don’t, then that’s good for me too.”
The Pirate offense came through with some timely hitting to put enough run support on the board for Lauck.
Perryville broke through in the second inning when Barrett Wheeler hit a two-out single up the middle to give Perryville a 1-0 lead.
That lead held until the fourth inning when Chaffee’s Levi McKinnie hit a one-out triple to left, when the next batter Carson Spies singled him home to tie the game 1-1.
The Pirates responded in the bottom half of the inning, all with two outs, as Dalton Fritsche singled, Wheeler walked and Lauck was hit by a pitch to load the bases.
Troy O’Keefe doubled to right field to score two runs to go ahead 3-1. Perryville added another run in the fifth inning for the final margin. O’Keefe went 2 for 3 with a pair of RBI.
Lauck hit his pitch count and the Pirates turned to Waylon Huber for the final five outs. He didn’t allow a hit and struck out two batters.
“I told Waylon that we needed a little more than an inning from you and he went in and pitched beautifully,” O’Keefe said. “This is a program that has been kicked in the mouth for years and hopefully more wins like this can give the guys confidence and the ability to grow together.”
In game two, the Pirate offense exploded for seven runs in the third inning against Delta. Perryville scored their 10 runs in the first three innings.
Lauck led the way for the Pirates going 3 for 3 with one RBI and one run scored. Troy O’Keefe added two hits with two runs scored. Logan Hoehn and Caleb Triller each added two RBI as well.
