Blake Osbourne
Columbus North baseball continues to remain unbeaten this season.
North picked up three runs in the bottom the fourth inning to come away with a 5-0 win over visiting Batesville Tuesday night.
Blake Osbourne pitched five innings in the win for North. He gave up three hits while striking out eight. Joey Fry shut out Batesville over the final two innings and had four strikeouts.
“I felt good. I was ready to go last week, but we had a couple games get rained out,” Osbourne said. “I was really ready to go tonight, and I was excited to get out there and pitch. Obviously, every time I go out there, I put the team in position to win, and I did a good job of holding them. We were able to tack on some runs.”
North (3-0) went through the batting order one time before the bats starting swinging. North scored the first run in the bottom of the third when Sam Perry singled and eventually scored on a single from Osbourne to lead 1-0.
North added to its lead in the fourth inning when Connor Hensley hit a leadoff single. Zach McLean blasted a triple in the gap in right-center field to make it 2-0. Jayce Emmitt hit a sacrifice fly to left field to plate another run, and a passed ball scored the third run of the inning to increase the lead to 4-0.
North scored their final run of the game in the bottom of the fifth when Osbourne singled and went to third on a single from Brock Kintner. Hensley hit a sacrifice fly to left field to score the final run.
“We stayed focused,” North coach Mike Bodart said. “We don’t get down on ourselves if we don’t start scoring runs in the first inning, and that’s OK. That lets our guys to pass that knowledge along to the next one down the lineup. We‘ve got to the point where we were trying to manufacture a run. We got that one run in, and that was big. That started getting things going.”
Osbourne was 2 for 2 with an RBI, McLean was 1 for 3 with a triple and Hensley finished 1 for 3 with an RBI for Columbus North, which hosts a makeup game Wednesday against Bloomington North.
