southlandvikings.com

A pitchers’ duel was the storyline for most of the game, but the Will County CrackerJacks (20-11) took advantage of critical mistakes by the Southland Vikings (13-17) to pick up an extra-winning win to start the second half of the season.

Both starting pitchers were strong as neither team could take more than a one-run lead. The Vikings struck first in the fifth inning when Damon Saunders singled to score James Dawson from third base. But the CrackerJacks would soon tie it up in the bottom of the inning and then took a 2-1 lead in the sixth.

In the eighth inning, the Vikings would retake the lead. With Vince Parisi on second, Elliott Armstrong had an RBI triple. Shane Brown followed with a sacrifice fly to give the Vikings a 3-2 lead. But in the bottom half of the inning, an error by Saunders allowed a run to score to tie the game.

After no one scored in the ninth, the game went to extra innings. In the bottom of the tenth, Daniel Nevares led off with a double. With Jonathan Rosario (2-0) on the mound, Shaun McGraw bunted the ball, which was fielded by Rosario. He threw to first but Chris Stevens could not catch the ball, allowing Nevares to score from second to give the CrackerJacks a 4-3 win.

Despite getting the loss, Chris Chigas (2-1) was stellar on the mound. He went eight innings, allowing only one earned run on eight hits while striking out five. Ben Gullo (3-1) pitched well for the CrackerJacks as he went 9.2 innings, allowing three earned runs off five hits along with four strikeouts. Austin Dunfee (2-0) picked up the win.

While the Vikings’ defense was the main issue, the team ended the game with only five hits and Dan Potempa was the only Vikings’ batter to record multiple hits.

After taking Saturday off, the Vikings will look to get revenge against the CrackerJacks on Sunday at Brennan Field.