Bittersweet finish to remarkable season
By Mike McMurran
Sports Editor
The Webb City Cardinals are known throughout the state of Missouri as a football powerhouse. All those football trophies are going to have to make space for the school’s first baseball title; unfortunately it comes at the expense of head coach Charlie Meeker’s baseball Pirates. “We really had a hard time getting any scouting information on them,” said Meeker after his team had been defeated by a score of 9-1, “not that it would have made any difference. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to take anything away from their win, they earned it,” he said.
Had the Pirates received a scouting report, they certainly would have known outfielder Eric Clark was something special. The 5’9” senior led the state with 41 stolen bases. All he did against the Pirates was go 3 for 5 from the plate, scoring 4 runs, while driving in 2. In one of the two plate appearances Clark failed to hit, he still managed to reach base and score. In the first inning, Pirate starter Brad Bichel struck Clark out. Unfortunately it was a wild pitch, getting past catcher Brian Randazzo and going to the screen. It led to Webb City’s first run.
The game was much closer than the score indicated. The Pirates were down 3-0 in the bottom of the second when third basemen Kyle Boschert doubled in Randazzo making the score 3-1. It stayed that way until the sixth inning when the Cardinals put together 4 hits for 3 runs. That pretty much did the Pirates in. You could almost feel the air leave their sails as they allowed 3 more runs in the 7th for the 9-1 final.
Bichel pitched much better than the final score suggested. “Brad is not a strike out pitcher,” said Meeker, “If you had told me before the game started Brad would strike out 9, I would have thought we would be O.K.” Bichel in fact struck out 9 in 5 and 1/3 innings. However, unfortunately it was not enough.
