Silver Creek's 7th-inning rally brings 6-5 win

By Keith Groller
Of The Morning Call


With their season about to fade to black, Silver Creek stirred in the darkness last night in Springtown.

Three outs away from elimination in Game 3 of the Tri-County League Championship Series and with street lights blinking on throughout the Lehigh Valley, the Raiders erupted for a pair of runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to salvage a 6-5 victory over East Texas and stay alive in the best-of-five title series.

The Longhorns, still up 2-games-to-1, will now try to close it out in Game 4, slated for 5 p.m. tomorrow in East Texas.

Darren "Boo" Sutton slapped a one-out single to left for the game- winner to cap the rally and a wild seventh inning in which Silver Creek saw a 4-2 lead vanish like much of Mother Nature's daylight.

"We were really embarrassed," Sutton said. "The two games we lost were probably our worst games of the year. We had to come through today. It would have been real tough to take to get swept, especially after we lost three in a row last year."

"Now, we have another life. We just need to win the next one Sunday and things will take care of itself."

After seizing the lead in the top of the seventh when two runs scored on a throwing error off George Horn's chopper to third, East Texas turned to its closer, Tim Brader.

But the hard-throwing lefty, who had had several successful seasons in the Detroit Tigers' organization, couldn't close down the Silver Creek season.

Mike Drumbore greeted him with a double to left. Drumbore was removed for pinch-runner Jason Erschen, who hustled to third on Dave Hartranft's grounder.

Erschen then scored on Matt Smull's fielder's choice hopper to second. Smull reached on the play and came around on hits by Chris Gordon and Sutton.

"I fouled off about four pitches in a row," Sutton said. "He kept throwing me inside curves. I just choked up and bore down, trying to put it in play. It was dark, but it doesn't affect you at the plate. When you're up there, you're focused. You're intense. You just battle the situation and do what you got to do."

"It might've been better that it was dark," theorized Silver Creek manager Steve Smull. "Because it was so dark, we just tried to see the ball and react, instead of thinking about it. That's the way you have to hit against Brader."

Early on, it appeared as though Silver Creek wouldn't need any late heroics to force Game 4. The Raiders (29-6) jumped on Longhorn starter Troy Phillips for three hits and three runs in the first to take a 3-1 lead.

East Texas (25-10) closed the gap to 3-2 with their second unearned run of the game when Horn doubled, moved to third on a sacrifice bunt and scored when the throw from center on a flyout got by the catcher.

But Silver Creek regained the two-run cushion on Gordon's RBI single in the fifth.

Gordon, who went 3-for-3 with two RBI, made his presence felt behind the plate by gunning down speedy Matt Moore, who tried to advance when a pitch got away from Raider pitcher Dylan Dando and caromed off the screen for the second out in the seventh inning.

"Sometimes you get the home hops like that and, thank goodness, we got it there," Gordon said. "If we don't get (Moore), they could have really had a big inning."

It was big enough as far as Silver Creek fans were concerned. With two out and nobody on base, four straight Longhorns reached base on Dando, who entered the seventh working on an impressive six-hitter.

Jeremy Warmkessel singled in a run to make it 4-3 before Horn's chopper was thrown away, allowing two Longhorns to score. It put East Texas just a half-inning away from its first Tri-Co title ever. But just when they could begin to taste the champagne, Silver Creek was granted a reprieve from the baseball gods.

"It's a shame because we were so close to winning it all, but I'm very proud of the way we came back," Horn said. "We showed that we're going to fight all the way to the end. We didn't give up and they didn't give up, either. Now, we come back home. Our guys are still pumped. They're not down. Under different circumstances, maybe we would have won tonight."

If a fifth game is needed, it would be played back in Springtown Monday night, but Steve Smull isn't thinking beyond tomorrow.

"We're just looking one game at a time; to look too far ahead is a mistake," he said. "We're going to have Eric Steckel going Sunday, so we'll see what happens. All I know is that it would have been a long, long off-season if we had lost this one tonight. It would have been a gut-wrencher. The guys came back. But we can't stop here."



keith.groller@mcall.com

From The Morning Call -- August 13, 1994

Copyright © 1994, The Morning Call