Kingsford Boys Roll Past Esky In Tourney Opener
Click the thumbnails to see photos and videos, and to hear post-game comments from Kingsford's Connor Chrisman and Dylan Fortier.
QUINNESEC----The Kingsford Major Little League All-Stars (age 11-12) opened district tournament play Friday night with a resounding 18-3 win over Escanaba at the Quinnesec Field. The Kingsford boys took advantage of multiple walks, errors, and wild pitches, to easily advance to the second round against Schaffer, which had a first-round bye.
Kingsford pitcher Connor Chrisman was on his game. After giving up two runs in the first inning on a Jayce Braun RBI ground out and an RBI double by Drew Anderson, Chrisman slammed the door, frustrating the Escnaba batters.
Chrisman struck out the side in the second inning, and had two more strikeouts in both the third and fourth innings, before being removed from the mound in a pitch-count move with Kingsford holding a huge lead on the scoreboard.
“I'm used to pitching outside, and low, for the umps, so I threw it there a lot,” Chrisman said. “I threw a lot of off-speed, and I feel great, because now I cam pitch on Monday. We hit pretty good. The first inning was okay, but after that, we started to hit really good. One of our better games.”
Kingsford turned a 3-2 game into a 9-2 lead in the third inning when Escanaba pitchers walked six consecutive batters, and three of them scored on wild pitches. Griffin Johnson smoked an RBI double and Dylan Fortier had an RBI single in that inning.
Fortier had three hits, walked once, and scored four times for Kingsford.
“I was thinking, we've just got to win this game,” Fortier said. “It was fast pitchers, good pitchers. But, we just made contact.”
Escanaba used five pitchers and they combined to strike out 12 Kingsford batters in the six inning game, but those pitchers also walked 12 batters and hit another.
Kingsford used three pitchers, and combined to strike out 11 Escanaba batters, including Fortier, who fanned the final three batters of the game.
Kingsford had ten base hits, with five of them being infield singles. The Flivver defense made only one error, while Escanaba's defense committed four miscues.
Kingsford will face Schaffer in the winner's bracket of the tournament at 4:00 CT/5:00 ET on Saturday. Escanaba drops into the loser's bracket and will face Iron Mountain Sunday afternoon.
