Columbus East’s Tyler Bumbalough slides across home plate against Center Grove at Columbus East High School.
The way Wednesday’s baseball season opener started, it looked like Class 4A No. 5 Center Grove would cruise to an easy win at Columbus East.
But after giving up three runs and six hits in falling behind 3-0 after 1 1/2 innings, the Olympians came to life. They battled back to take the lead on two occasions and after falling behind again, tied the game in the bottom of the sixth, moments before the game was called because of darkness with the score tied 7-7 in the top of the seventh.
“It’s good for our guys,” East coach Jon Gratz said. “That’s why we play them. We want to see the top competition and see what we can do against it, and I think our guys found out that they can compete with the best. I think that’s a good thing moving forward.”
The Trojans jumped on the board with two runs on three hits in the first and one run on three hits in the second against Ethan Ianni, leaving the bases loaded in the second. But then the Olympians took the lead with four in the bottom of the second off Ben Murphy, highlighted by RBI-singles by Alex McComb and Ty Uphaus and a bases loaded walk to Josh Luedeke.
“We came out and hit a couple of hard shots in the first, so I felt pretty good. I didn’t really feel like our guys were going to roll over,” Gratz said. “I thought we showed a lot of heart not giving up there early when they jumped out to a lead.”
Center Grove tied it with a run off Will Boyer in the third. East then took the lead back in the bottom of the inning on a double by Logan Christophel, an RBI by McComb and a an RBI-single by Harry Major.
The Trojans scored three times off Major in the fifth to take a 7-6 lead before Rolan Ryan came on to pitch out of the jam. Then in the sixth, the Olympians’ Parker Harris came on to record the final out with the bases loaded.
“They hit it real well against our top pitcher (Ianni), who was making some good pitches,” Gratz said. “They’re a really good hitting team. I felt like we just kept battling and kept battling. We had some young pitchers who came in in some tough situations, and they just kept battling.”
East tied it in the sixth on a two-out double by Will Rieckers and an RBI-single by Ianni.
Center Grove outhit the Olympians 10-6, with each team making two errors. Six different East players had one hit.
“I thought we hit the ball really well, which a thought we would do before the season, but you never really know until you get in an actual game,” Gratz said. “We hit the ball, we played pretty good defense. Pitching, we had some walks, but that’s OK. We just need to finish innings.”
