By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
CORVALLIS, Ore.– The Corvallis Marketmen American Legion team started off slow in their Triple-A Area-3 League Opener against the Mid-Coast Dungies on Monday night.
Entering the bottom half of the third inning, it was a 0-0 ball game as Santiam Christian-grad Josh Riddle and the Dungies Ezra James, who went an inning, and Darian Schultz had a nice little defensive battle going. That was, until the Marketmen put the ball in play and found the gaps. They strung those hits together and slowly the runs came across.
It was 2-0 after three innings Corvallis, 5-0 after four and it just crept up from there until they pushed their tenth run across in the bottom half of the sixth inning to close out the game 10-0.
Anchored by Philomath’s AJ Altishin’s 3-for-4, 3RBI day, the game was the most runs they scored all season to this point. And the last two days’ run total (18) nearly matched that of their first five games of the season (19) as the bats look like they’ve come around for the Marketmen going into Tuesday’s doubleheader in Newport.
“It’s big for us, we haven’t been as offensive as we would like to start the year. I think that was a big one to start going, get us going a little bit,” Altishin said. “This definitely sets the tone for league, for this series and moving on. It sets the tone that the league games matter and you need to go get as many of them as you can.”
But with the games they’ve played so far, against one of the American Legion juggernauts in Eugene and then Hillsdale this past weekend, the hopes that it’ll continue to pay off when they string together more games together into the latter part of June and into July in preparations for a possible State Playoff run.
“It just gets us ready for league, especially seeing some of the better teams like Eugene. That Hillsdale team is going to be there, it’s good to see those types of arms and those types of bats, especially to start the year early,” said Altishin.
In Game 1 of the series, Riddle went the distance, throwing a one-hitter and striking out two in the victory for Corvallis. James led the Dungies pitching staff with three strikeouts in his one inning of work. Schultz had the lone hit for Mid-Coast, the hit coming in the fourth inning.
The Corvallis-Mid-Coast series will conclude in Newport on Tuesday with the first pitch at 3pm.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
