2B Baseball: Indians Fall to Colfax in State Semifinals

The breaks were unkind to Wes Kuzminsky and his horde of Toledo Indian teammates on Friday night as they dropped their State 2B baseball semifinal showdown with the Bulldogs of Colfax by a score of 4-2.

Kuzminsky, who pitched all seven inning for Toledo with seven strikeouts, and his counterpart from Colfax, Garrett Burke, both began the evening professionally calibrated and through three innings each had faced only the minimum number of batters. Both pitchers ultimately turned in sterling complete-game performances, although the rules dictate that one of the two would be forced to take a hard-luck loss home for all their efforts.

To the dismay of Toledo fans, it was the Bulldogs who emerged from the fracas with the hard-fought victory.

“4-2 is a good game for the fans,” said the downtrodden Toledo skipper, Jeff Davis. “Certainly it’s better for the Colfax fans right now.

“When you are here, you want to win. You expect to win,” added Davis. “If we play clean ball it’s a different ballgame.”

The uncleanliness that Davis referred to in the postgame chat popped up by way of defensive errors and unfortunate baserunning gaffes by his Indians. With Burke dealing on the bump, it ultimately proved costly when Toledo’s first two baserunners of the game were thrown out on the bases.

Those miscues followed Toledo onto the field, at times, as well. Only two of Kuzminsky’s runs allowed were of the earned variety on the night, and he had a perfect game bid broken up in the fourth inning when a routine groundball was flubbed in the infield. That runner eventually came around to score after a stolen base, an error on an overthrow, and a dying quail that fell to safe ground in shallow right field.

“He’s a warrior. We’ve done some different things with him this year,” said Davis of Kuzminsky. Sometimes the herky-jerky right hander will start the game and go three innings before giving way to a deep Toledo bullpen. Other times he has come in for long relief, or some other variant of a pitching appearance.

Before the game Kuzminsky expected he would only pitch about three innings.

“Today I made the decision in the third inning that we would let him go,” said Davis, who noted that his team seemed to have Burke timed as they were hitting balls hard all over the field. It just so happened that they were regularly hit right at Bulldog defenders.

On the flip side of that two-faced pitcher’s coin was Burke, who allowed just 2 runs in seven innings of efficient work.

“He’s not overpowering at all, but he’s just a competitor and gets the job done,” said Colfax coach Mike Parrish.

Burke, who earned MVP honors of his league this year by hitting .529 while going 9-1 on the mound with a 1.66 ERA, also drove in the Bulldogs first run of the game in the inning where Kuzminsky’s perfect game evaporated into thin air.

“This group of kids is really hard to beat,” added Parrish. “They’ve all got each other’s backs and that’s unusual in this day in age.”

In the sixth inning, trailing 3-0, Toledo finally got busy with their bats and looked poised to flip an ill-scripted fate on its lopsided head. Konner Crawford led the inning off with a single, his second hit of the day, and then took second base on a wild pitch that nearly killed an osprey near the concession stand. One out later Kolt Korpi drove Crawford home with a single to left field and then took second base on the ensuing throw to the plate.

Looking to carry even more of the load, Kuzminsky then stepped to the plate and promptly drove Korpi home with a single of his own to left field. With only one out, Toledo had the tying run standing in scoring position at second base, but a fly out and an unassisted put-out by the Colfax first baseman put the Indian threat to bed.

Although Kuzminsky recorded all three outs in the seventh by way of strikeout Colfax was still able to squeeze a precious insurance run across, thanks to a double and a single by the 8 and 9 hitters in the Bulldogs order, respectively.

Unwilling to go silently into that cold dark night Toledo kept the screws tight on Burke throughout the seventh inning. Connor Vermilyea led the inning off with a double and then advanced to third base on a wild pitch before being replaced by pinch runner Alex Bacon. With the tying run represented at the plate for the rest of the inning, Burke coaxed a groundout, a fly-out and a strikeout to escape the danger and secure a spot in Saturday’s championship game for his squad.

“Win, lose, draw, or different, these guys have been real tough all year,” said Davis of his battle tested Indians, whom he expects will come out and play with a renewed zeal Saturday when they face DeSales for the third-place trophy.

Davis characterized his team as resilient, and pointed to their propensity for winning the second game of C2BL doubleheaders this year, even after the first contest had gone awry in some fashion.

“Of course they (DeSales) got beat pretty bad earlier today so they’re going to come out with something to prove,” said Davis of the next foe in line for his team. “They don’t want to go 0-2, either.”

Toledo and DeSales will play Saturday at Ed Wheeler Field in Centralia at 10 a.m.