Loggers win Grand Championship with home run
Pitching was the name of the game, but it was a home run that made the difference in this year’s BABA Grand Championship.
Hunter Gruenwald’s two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth inning erased a 1-0 deficit and gave Little Falls a 2-1 win over Waupaca on Sept. 2.
It was the Loggers’ seventh Grand Championship win and first since 2007, while the Lakemen were playing for their second championship in a row and 16th overall.
The game featured a pitching matchup of Little Falls’ Chris Dunn and Waupaca’s Cam Seidl. They combined to throw nearly 250 pitches, as Dunn finished with 127 over nine innings and Seidl with 120 over eight frames.
They also struck out 14 batters each. Seventeen of the game’s 18 batting positions had at least one strikeout and nine had at least two. Waupaca’s Johnny Popham was the only batter that didn’t strike out in the game.
Gruenwald’s home run was one of seven hits for the Loggers, while Dunn held the Lakemen to two.
Dunn retired the Lakemen in order in the first two innings. Kal Fischer drew a leadoff walk for Little Falls in the bottom of the first and Gruenwald added a two-out single to left field, but Seidl ended the inning with a strikeout as well as getting all three batters in the second.
Wes Austin led off Waupaca’s half of the third with a smash off of Dunn’s glove that rolled toward second base, but Austin easily beat the throw to. Popham drew a walk after a pair of strikeouts that moved Austin to second, but another strikeout ended the frame.
Popham bobbled Fischer’s slow roller to short for a one-out error in the third. A strikeout preceded Drew Radies’ single, but both baserunners were stranded after another strikeout.
Neither team had a baserunner in the fourth inning. Shawn Peskie led off the Lakemen half of the fifth with a four-pitch walk and moved to second on Austin’s sacrifice bunt. Seidl struck out on a tough pitch that catcher Jeremy Bauer couldn’t handle and he reached first with Peskie making it to third.
With Kyle Douglas at the plate, the Lakemen tried a squeeze bunt with both runners moving on the pitch. Douglas missed the attempt to bunt the high fastball, but Bauer tried to throw out courtesy runner Eric Brehmer at second base. The throw was high and Peskie scored easily from third to give the Lakemen a 1-0 lead.
Douglas struck out for the second out and Popham grounded to short, but the throw to first was wide pulling Jenner Gullixon off of the bag. Brehmer had rounded third and tried to make it to the plate, but Gullixon reacted quickly enough to get a throw to Bauer in time to get Brehmer in a rundown.
The Loggers went down in order in the bottom of the fifth.
The sixth started with a walk to Travis Holat and Luke Behm’s sacrifice bunt. Walker Smith followed with a smash headed down the right-field line. Gullixon managed to just get a glove on the ball as it rolled into shallow right field, but not far enough for Holat to score.
The next batter, Tyler Goggins, worked Dunn to a full count. With Smith taking off on the next pitch, Goggins hit a soft liner to the left of the second baseman, who caught it and tossed back to first to just beat the slide of Smith for an inning-ending double play.
Kasey Morgan led off the Loggers’ sixth with a bloop single to short left field that Popham made a dive for, but came up about a foot short. After a strikeout, Seidl hung a curve ball on the inside part of the plate that Gruenwald hit toward the fence down the left-field line. Smith appeared to have a play on the ball, but it had just enough carry that it could not be caught and when it landed on the other side of the fence, the Loggers had a 2-1 lead. Seidl gave up another hit in the inning to Nate Korb, but no more runs.
Neither team scored in the eighth, although Popham reached with one out, as his ground ball down the third base line got under Connor Kurki’s glove and into left field for an error. After a strikeout, Behm sent a fly ball toward the fence in left field that looked as if it might carry out of the park, but the ball fell into the left fielder’s glove about 10 feet short of the fence for the final out of the inning.
Gruenwald lined a ball to the opposite field that Goggins made a dive for. The ball hit just fair and rolled into dead ball territory near the right-field foul pole for a ground-rule double. Seidl had enough in the tank to get the next three hitters.
The Lakemen ninth went quickly, although Goggins hit a fly ball to straight away center field that was easily caught but for a moment gave Lakemen fans hope that it might go deeper. The game ended with a final strikeout on a called third strike as the Loggers’ players and fans celebrated.
The Lakemen and Loggers stranded six and eight runners, respectively. Little Falls had two errors, while the Lakemen had one.
Lakemen chatter
• The Lakemen finished the season with an overall record of 22-8-1.
• Gruenwald’s home run was just the second given up by Lakemen pitchers this season. By comparison, the Lakemen hit nine homers.
• The loss was Waupaca’s first on a Sunday against South-Central Division and BABA playoff teams since the second game of the 2017 season to Scandinavia. That meant the Lakemen finished last year with 10 straight South-Central wins plus four more the playoffs. This year, they went 12-0 in division play with three playoff wins. That adds up to 29 straight Sunday wins.