Olympia (grand) slams Tigers

Photo by Rocky Ross

YOU’RE OUT. Stadium Tigers catcher Tony Rossetto tags out an Olympia player trying to score in the Tigers’ game against the Bears March 21. Olympia won the game 11-7 thanks to a first-inning grand slam by Krammer Chaplin.

On March 21, there was a bright and sunny blue sky gracing Tacoma. It was the perfect day to play a game of baseball. But when the Stadium Tigers took the field against the Olympia Bears…well, that is when the weather started to turn. The perfect day turned into a wet and soggy one.

Blue skies were quickly replaced with overcast ones while rays of sunlight turned into drops of rain. Lots of them. But through all the bad weather, Olympia came with its bats on fire. The Bears used 10 runs in the first three innings to slam them past the Tigers, 11-7 at Heidelberg Park.

“We’ve got some injuries to our pitching staff, so we’ve had to go to some young blood,” said Stadium coach Chuck Peterson.

The trouble for the Tigers started in the top of the first inning. After putting the first batter of the game out on a grounder, pitcher Barron Tanay gave up a single and two walks to the next three batters to load the bases. That brought Olympia’s Kramer Chaplin to the plate.

And on a 1-2 pitch, Chaplin drove Tanay’s pitch over the left field fence for a grand slam. All of a sudden, Olympia found itself with a big 4-0 lead in the top of the first. Tanay pitched an inning worth of work and gave up seven runs before being relieved by Seth Timpke in the second inning.

At the plate, Stadium was not having too much success either. It was three up, three down for the Tigers in the first and second innings before Taylor Medevich was hit by a pitch to lead off the third. As hot as the Olympia bats were, the Tigers found theirs to be quite the opposite.

“We’ve had a slow start,” Peterson said about his team’s season. “We’re just not getting the ball to bounce our way. Last year it bounced our way, but that’s baseball – we have to focus and play a little harder.”

In the fourth inning, after falling down 10-0, the Tiger bats finally started to show some signs of life. Brandon Williams led off with a single to break up the no-hitter and started a rally that would see Stadium plate three runs before its half of the inning was over.

Stadium catcher Tony Rossetto drove in his team’s first run of the game, sending Williams home from third base with a single. Rossetto and first baseman Anthony McCarthy scored when the Tigers got a two-out RBI single later on in the inning.

“They started to work together,” Peterson said about the team’s rally. “They started to play more as a we and that makes big difference for them.”

The Tigers gave up another run to Olympia in the top of the fifth, but after that they went to work at the plate, making a hard charge to get back into the game. The Tigers scored four runs in the final two innings before falling short, 11-7.

Peterson said that the Tigers ended up missing out on the normal number of preseason games due to scheduling conflicts, and that has been a major factor in their 0-3 start in league play.

“You need to get those four or five games to get those bugs out,” he said. “I’ve got kids that are coming through that you don’t know who they were and kids who should be coming through who have struggled.”

Second baseman Kevin Meyers went 2-4 in the game with two RBIs and a double for the Tigers.

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