High School Baseball: Toutle Lake slides past Toledo in C2BL rematch
PHOTO GALLERY – Fighting Ducks prevail 6-5; hand Riverhawks first league loss
Jordan Nailon for BlastZoneMedia.com / blastzonenews@gmail.com
2B Prep Baseball / Report
TOUTLE – The Toledo baseball team was missing a few faces in the dugout on Friday in the second game of the Gateway to The Blast Zone series. After posting a narrow victory over Toutle Lake earlier in the week on the other side of the county line, the Riverhawks were forced to leave a couple good men behind for the trek to East Cowlitz County as head coach Mac Gaul and shortstop Joaquin Acosta were forced to sit the game out.
That one-game suspension was handed down after Gaul and Acosta were ejected during Tuesday’s contest. Acosta was given the heave-ho for some blue language in celebration of a home run, and Gaul was tossed after defending the honor of his player. Such is baseball.
But just because two of their cornerstones were missing from action didn’t mean the Riverhawks were up the neighboring drainage without a paddle. Rather, Toledo jumped all over the hosts in the opening frame, but could not hold on as that early lead morphed into a 6-5 loss in neighborly Central 2B League affair.
After their original plan went awry almost immediately, the Fighting Ducks had to rely on a pair of freshman arms – Walker Johnson and Rebel Tibbles – to get them out of the woods.
“Relying on a pair of freshmen today to bail us out, we couldn’t have asked for anymore from them,” TL head coach Chris Byrd said.
As for the Riverhawks, they had plenty to think about on the short trek home, over the hills and across the Layton Prairie cutoff after suffering their first league loss of the spring. But former Toledo head coach (and current assistant) Bill Waag didn’t need that long to figure out what went wrong in his first loss as skipper since stepping down from the position three seasons ago.
“I think we gave them too many chances,” Toledo assistant coach Bill Waag said after filling in as skipper for the day. “Defensively we didn’t make some plays that would have ended innings and kept runners off the base. You do that against a good team like Toutle and they’re going to capitalize on it. Hats off to Toutle. They battle and they hustle and they play the game the right way. We just need to get better.”
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