by Vince Rodemer
LEWISTOWN--Mifflin County and Clarence looked to be in a pitcher's duel through three innings on Monday night.
The two teams combined for one hit over that time, but everything went haywire after that and Mifflin County used Clarence starter Noah Chambers' ineffectiveness against him to plate five fourth-inning runs and knock off the visitors 11-1 in five innings at Mifflin County High School.
"I said to the guys after the game that I couldn't remember a time where an inning could go that bad for a team," Mifflin County coach Bernie Howard said. "You just have to take advantage of that and we did. We were in a little bit of a scoring drought when Ross got the base hit (to start the inning). He hit three guys in a row, I'm not sure that I've seen that in a long time."
Post 287 plated those five runs on just one hit and added six more in the fifth to finish the game.
Ty Bodtorf tossed a complete game, allowed just a pair of hits and struck out five batters for Mifflin County.
The only hit early on belonged to Clarence's Matthew Reese, a single up the middle to lead off the game.
Bodtorf retired the following nine hitters though to keep the game scoreless through three innings of play.
Clarence took a 1-0 lead in its half of the fourth that started with Reese's walk to begin the inning.
Andy Swabick smashed a one-out double to deep center to score Reese and make it 1-0.
Bodtorf got the following two hitters on a groundout and fly out to end the inning and threat.
"The complete game that he threw recently was his longest outing of the year," Howard said of Bodtorf. "We didn't want to take him off short during the high school season, so he threw a minimum number of innings. I thought he looked excellent in the last game and certainly didn't disappoint tonight. He did an excellent job."
The bottom half of Chambers' disastrous fourth started innocently with a Ross Underhill single up the middle.
Chambers hit the following three batters--Isaac Maclay, Bortorf and Kenny Cavanaugh with Cavanaugh's scoring Underhill to even the game at 1-1.
A pair of wild pitches and Hostetler's sac fly made it 4-1 and a passed ball made it 5-1 Mifflin County.
Bodtorf got Clarence in order in the fifth, which included a pair of strikeouts to set the stage for the bottom half of the inning.
Caleb Bell came on in relief, but ran into the same issues as Chambers.
Andrew Larson singled to begin the inning and Ross Underhill and Isaac Maclay drew back-to-back walks to load the bases.
"We talk about (patience) a lot," Howard said. "You don't want to give the advantage to the opposition. I thought our guys handled that very well. We drew two walks there because the guys battled and stayed off bad pitches. I thought overall for us, it was a pretty good game."
Bortorf drove in a pair of runs in with a single and Kenny Cavanaugh walked to reload the bases.
Zach Hostetler was hit by a pitch and brother Nick chopped a two-run single to third to extend the lead to 10-1.
A grounder up the middle from Aaron Kanagy ended the game at 11-1.
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