Boise drops Prairie in state opener

LEWISTON - Playing against the best teams in the state, the Prairie Cardinals let one slip away to open the state Class AA American Legion baseball tournament on Wednesday at Harris Field.

Prairie committed three errors, which led to three unearned runs in the fourth inning, losing to the Boise Gems 5-2 in the opening round of the tournament.

The Cardinals stranded 10 runners on base.

"We had the bases loaded a couple times and couldn't get the guy in," Prairie coach Ron Mackie said. "We just need to clean that up and with the combination of errors. Playing the top teams in the state, you need to play your best baseball, and we didn't today."

Prairie (25-23) will face the Twin Falls Cowboys in a loser-out game today at 10 a.m.

Kris Jackson struck out two in his first game back since jaw surgery for Prairie.

"He's still kind of wired up," Mackie said. "But he battled through and could have started the eighth inning, but it started to heat up. He was still good to go and threw well for not playing in a few weeks."

The game-time temperature was 78 degrees, but increased to 92 by the end of the game.

"The last couple practices we'd had in the afternoon during the heat to prepare," Mackie said. "They understood they needed to drink water and avoid the cramping issues. But there's not much you can do. We just had that one inning where we had some errors and they put some runners on."

Blake Wrotenbery and Jacob Koski scored in the fourth inning for Prairie.

In other opening round action, the Nampa Chiefs beat Twin Falls 9-1, Idaho Falls beat the Meridian Rangers 11-1 and xxxxxx.

Prairie 000 200 0 - 2 7 3

Boise 200 300 x - 5 6 1

Kris Jackson, Brian Howell (8) and James Prockish; Fasth and Roper. W - Fasth. L - Jackson (4-4).

HITS: Pra - Howell, Valente, Prockish, Wrotenbery 2, Koski, Strong. Boi - Kim, Steffler, Taylor, Ducharme, Engleson, Anderson. 2B - Wrotenbery, Steffler, Ducharme.