Prairie ends abbreviated season with losses, but experienced gained
POST FALLS — The Prairie Cardinals were one out away from ending their season on a winning note on Friday.
But the visiting Moses Lake Spuds scored two runs on a base hit in the top of the seventh inning to beat the Cardinals 14-13 in the second game of an American Legion (independent) doubleheader at Post Falls High.
Moses Lake won the first game 13-3, breaking open a tight game with eight runs in the seventh.
“Everything that could go wrong, went wrong,” Prairie coach Mick Zeller said of the seventh innings. “It was frustrating.”
In the second game, Ethan Miller and Zach Clark hit RBI doubles in the second inning for Prairie. Miller was 2 for 4 with two RBIs and four runs scored, and Clark and Jared Passinetti each drove in two runs.
The Cardinals led 13-11 after drawing back-to-back bases-loaded walks in the fifth. The teams combined to walk 29 batters and hit five in the nightcap.
Prairie played just nine games and finished 1-8. Zeller said his team had roughly two dozen other scheduled games canceled for one reason or another.
Then again, the Cardinals weren’t assured until May that they would even have a Legion season, due to COVID-19.
“I thought we were going to sit all summer,” Zeller said. “But at least we got to play nine. And the kids want to keep practicing.”
So Zeller said the Cardinals will continue to practice, once a week or so, until he begins his duties as an assistant football coach at Post Falls High on Aug. 10.
Zeller, who is also the Post Falls High varsity baseball coach, guided a young Legion team in which only three of his players likely would have been on the varsity team this spring — which had its season canceled before it could play again. And only one of those players (his son Spencer) had previous varsity experience.
The rest of the players would have been on the JV or freshman team, so the Legion season “was kind of an extended tryout” for next year’s high school team, Zeller said.
FIRST GAME
Moses Lake 400 010 8 — 13 13 2
Prairie 010 020 0 — 3 8 2
Valdez, Mecham (6) and N/A; Jayden Butler, Jerad Taylor (7), Jared Passinetti (7) and N/A.
HITS: ML — Visker 2, Birdie 3, Shea 2, Valdez 2, Kern 2, Meacham, Mecham. Pra — Zeller, Miller 2, Clark 2, Sessions 2, Passinetti. 2B — Shea, Sessions. HR — Birdie.
SECOND GAME
Moses Lake 414 111 2 — 14 10 3
Prairie 433 120 0 — 13 6 0
ML battery unavailable; Timmy Bastedo, Trevor Miller (3), Jared Passinetti (4), Tanner Sessions (6) and Jerad Taylor.
HITS: ML — Birdie, Raymond, Bernal 2, others unavailable. Pra — Miller 2, Clark 2, Sessions, Passinetti. 2B — Raymond, other ML names unavailable, Clark, Miller.
LATE THURSDAY
Cannons 9
Lums 7
COEUR d’ALENE — Coeur d’Alene tied it with three runs in the bottom of the seventh inning, but the Spokane Cannons scored on an error and a wild pitch in the eighth to beat the Lumbermen 9-7 at Thorco Field.
Marcus Manzardo hit an RBI double in the seventh to bring Coeur d’Alene (10-12-1) within two runs. Alex Karns followed with a run-scoring single, then scored the tying run on a bases-loaded walk to Riley Smith.
Breyson Coppess’s two-run single in the first put the Lums ahead 4-1.
Coeur d’Alene is scheduled to host the Spokane Cannons on Sunday in a 4 p.m. doubleheader at Thorco Field.
Cannons 140 110 02 — 9 10 1
Cd’A 400 000 30 — 7 8 3
Karl Barsness, Cannon Marshall (2), Denton Deal (4), Van Vega (7), Triston Madison (7) and Madison, Tyler Balkenbusch (7); Landon Vergeer, Liam Paddack (2), Troy Shepard (5), Riley Smith (8) and Landen Thompson, Jackson Scherr (5).
HITS: Can — Balkenbush 2, McPherson 2, Kieffer 2, Ward, Edison, Swanson 2. Cd’A — Brum, Manzardo 2, Karns, Scherr 2, Smith, Coppess. 2B — Balkenbush, McPherson 2, Brum, Manzardo.