Clovers fall to Eels in five innings

CLAY CITY -- The long road trip that is the Cloverdale baseball season continued at Clay City High School on Tuesday night with a 14-1, five-inning defeat.

The Clovers, forced to play the entire season on the road due to work on their own field, didn't help their own cause much in the loss.

Eight errors plagued the youthful Clover lineup and Clay City's bats lit up with three home runs and six extra base hits in total.

"They played well," commented Clovers' coach Tim Savini on the Eels' offensive attack. "They hit the ball well. They've beat Shakamak and Northview this year. Clay City's a good ball club."

The game began on a positive note for the Clovers, who scored in the first inning on a lead off single by Zach Osbourn and Clay City hurler D.J. Newton plunked Josh Flory with no outs.

Kyle Martin followed by laying down a sacrifice bunt and the Eels made the mistake of trying to get the out at third base. The throw sailed wide of the base and Osbourn came around to score the game's first run.

From there however, the game belonged to the Eels.

Ben Dickey led off with an infield single for Clay City. He cruised to second on a throwing error on a pickoff attempt by Martin. A second error on the play let Dickey score to tie the game.

Tyler Bridgewater followed up with the first of his two homeruns in the game. Back-to-back walks and another error set up Matt Vansickle for an RBI double.

"Tyler was all over it tonight," said Clay City coach Ryan Swearingen of his freshman slugger. "He's been a big help to our lineup."

Martin got out of the inning without any further damage, trailing 3-1, but the Clover offense couldn't muster any answer to the Eels' surge.

Newton allowed just one more Cloverdale hit, a third inning single by Martin, while striking out 10 batters with no walks in five innings of work.

Clay City added two more runs in the second inning on Bridgewater's sixth home run of the year and added five in the third inning and four more in the fourth inning against Martin and Jeff Dale, who came in in relief with one out in the third inning.

"We're a young team," mentioned Savini. "We've got a lot of sophomores and juniors with some freshman too. These guys have another couple of years. We've just got to keep working hard and make sure that our next game is always our best game."

The Eels improved to 10-5 overall and Cloverdale drops to 1-14 on the season.

At Clay City

Cloverdale 100 00 -- 1 2 8

Clay City 325 4x -- 14 14 1

WP?-- Newton

LP?-- Martin

2B -- CC (Evans, M.Vansickle, Newton).

HR -- CC (Bridgewater 5, 6, Newton).