BASEBALL
Canton Repository
CANTON — It's a long way from Perrysburg in Northwest Ohio to Canton (about 164 miles to be exact).
So Perrysburg High School baseball coach Dave Hall planned to have his Yellow Jackets stay overnight in the area if they won Wednesday and advanced to Thursday's Division I regional final back at Thurman Munson Memorial Stadium.
Only problem was he needed to let the hotel know by 7:15 p.m. Wednesday if his team would need the rooms, and Wednesday's regional semifinal game vs. Jackson was still going on at that point.
"I don't need to do that in the middle of a game," Hall said with a chuckle. "If it would've been a one-run game, I would've been going nuts."
Some clutch hitting by the Yellow Jackets and some unlucky swings by the Polar Bears made Hall's decision a lot easier.
Perrysburg grabbed control early against Jackson and cruised to a 7-2 win June 4. The Yellow Jackets, a state semifinalist last year, will try to make it two straight final four appearances when they face Medina in a regional final at 5 p.m. June 5. The Bees beat GlenOak 9-8 in a thrilling first semifinal.
Perrysburg took some of the buzz out of the second semifinal early, chasing Jackson starter and Ohio State recruit Landon Thiel after two innings. JD Zeeb's massive three-run triple in the second flipped a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 lead for the Yellow Jackets. Zeeb scored on the very next pitch on a suicide squeeze bunt by Ryan Rettig to push Perrysburg's lead to 5-2.
"That changed the game," Hall said. "You get the three runs at once, then you get the fourth run immediately on the next pitch. It changes the mojo. I think the air went out of them and they started doubting a little bit."
Perrysburg had four hits in its first six at-bats with runners in scoring position.
Meanwhile Jackson blasted two ground-rule doubles and two other deep fly balls that might have been home runs in many high school parks but instead were outs in Munson's cavernous dimensions. The Polar Bears outhit Perrysburg 8-6, but they stranded 10 runners.
"I don't know what to say because I thought we caught barrels all day," Jackson head coach Bill Gamble said. "They hit the ball really well today and we didn't pitch really well today. We didn't execute our secondary pitches much, and when you become a fastball-throwing team they become a fastball-hitting team."
Thiel, a 6-foot-7 junior, had allowed three earned runs in 45.2 innings all season entering the game. He was charged with five runs on four hits, a walk and a hit batsman in two innings against Perrysburg, suffering his first loss of the season (6-1).
Zeeb finished 2-for-3 with four RBIs for Perrysburg (22-8). Rettig had two RBIs.
Perrysburg usually starts Aaron Banks and brings Preston Faris in relief. Hall flipped that against Jackson, with Faris starting and pitching two innings and Banks coming out of the pen. Banks worked five scoreless innings of relief to get the win and move to 7-1. He struck out five and allowed four hits.
Jackson (26-4) won the Federal League and was ranked No. 2 in the coaches association's final state poll. Wednesday's loss snapped a 17-game winning streak.
"That's a great program," said Hall, in his 40th year as Perrysburg's head coach. "It's really big beating them."
Jackson senior Noah Colando went 3-for-3 with one of the ground-rule doubles, which was a bad break because senior Cole Baker had to stop at third base instead of scoring in the second inning. He never did get home after a lineout, a strikeout and a popout by Jackson.
Senior Dylan Lahr had the other ground-rule double in the first, and he scored on junior Nico Kuty's two-run single. Lahr and Kuty both finished with two hits.
It would've been hard to believe that Jackson would not score again.
"It's just a humbling sport, and today we got humbled," Gamble said. "We did things right, and we didn't get rewarded."
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