Southeast baseball team makes most of second life, claims 11-10 win in 10 innings

In a game where neither team's pitching could silence the opposition's bats, the Southeast Missouri State baseball team's offense came out on top by a slim margin Tuesday night at Capaha Field.

Dalton Hewitt's bases-loaded, walk-off single to left-center field gave the Southeast Missouri State baseball team an 11-10 victory over Division II opponent Missouri S&T in 10 innings.

But that's not the play the Redhawks (29-15) or Miners (23-22) will remember most about the game.

About 10 minutes earlier, in the bottom of the ninth inning with one out, runners at first and third and Southeast trailing 10-9, Scott Mitchell appeared to ground into a game-ending 1-6-3 double play.

Seconds after the call was made by the first base umpire, Southeast coach Steve Bieser sprinted out of the dugout and into the middle of the field, where Missouri S&T was celebrating the outcome, to contest the call.

Bieser waved his arms in the air, motioning for the Miners' players and coaches to return to the dugout, then tracked down the umpires to discuss whether or not Missouri S&T first baseman Lance Portwood had come off the first-base bag before catching the throw from second base.

"I saw it clear as day," Bieser said. "We had the perfect angle to see that he pulled off the bag way early. Once I saw that I knew that if we didn't get an immediate response before everyone started celebrating, we had no chance to get that call overturned. [The umpires] were just about ready to get off the field and let it go."

Bieser requested an appeal from the first-base umpire and was given one. After about a two minute deliberation, the home-plate umpire overturned his crew member's call and awarded Mitchell first base.

"Their job is to make sure they get it right, and it just took me going out there to make them realize they needed another opinion," Bieser said. "Once they got together, the home-plate umpire saw exactly the same thing we did. It's tough and I hate for it to come down to that, and it's a tough pill to swallow for Missouri S&T, but I do believe they got the call right."

Hewitt, who had singled to begin the inning and moved up to third on a sacrifice bunt followed by a hit, scored on the fielder's choice to tie the game at 10-10.

Jason Blum led off the 10th with a single and advanced to second during the next at-bat on a wild pitch. Garrett Gandolfo was intentionally walked after Blum moved up to second just before Andy Lennington reached on a bunt single to load the bases for Hewitt's game-winner.

"I knew that if I put anything up in the air in the outfield, we had a chance," Hewitt said about his final at-bat. "This was a crazy game for everybody -- just glad we came out on top."

The Redhawks added the game against the Miners late last weekend with the primary goal of getting their pitchers some extra work in preparation for the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament, according to Bieser.

That plan backfired for starter Jacob Lawrence, who gave up five earned runs on six hits in just three innings of work, and for relief pitcher Greg Mosel, who gave up the same amount in 2/3 of an inning.

Luckily for Southeast, Ryan Lenaburg and Alex Siddle limited Missouri S&T to just three hits over the final 6 1/3 innings.

Lenaburg recorded the final out of the fourth and pitched a scoreless fifth, sixth and seventh.

Siddle entered the game in the eighth as Southeast's fourth pitcher and earned the victory. The right-handed senior struck out three and retired all nine batters he faced over three innings.

"The guys that I didn't want to get work was Lenaburg and Siddle," Bieser said with a laugh. "It was the other guys that needed it. It just didn't work out that way. We know we're going to need Lawrence and Mosel down the stretch and that's why I put them in, to keep them sharp. I really didn't want either Alex or Ryan to throw as much as they did, but when they're pitching like they are, you've got to go with them until they run out of gas."

Missouri S&T scored five runs in the first three innings to take a 5-3 advantage over the Redhawks before breaking the game open with a five-run fourth.

Southeast chipped away at the lead in the fifth thanks to Gandolfo's two-run home run over the right field wall. Andy Lennington, who had homered in the first, walked during the next at-bat, then scored two batters later on Branden Boggetto's single.

Boggetto cut the lead to two with another two-run shot in the seventh. The Redhawks hit a total of four home runs in the win and have a total of 52 this season. Trevor Ezell cut the lead to 10-9 in the eighth when he scored on Gandolfo's sacrifice fly.

"It was a team effort all the way through with the bullpen coming through in the last six innings and then the offense barely stringing together enough runs to sneak out of here with a win. But that's what we pride ourselves on," Blum said. He finished 4 for 5, scored three runs, including a solo home run in the second and reached base five times.

Southeast will host Tennessee Tech for a three-game series beginning at 6:30 p.m. Friday and has a chance to clinch the OVC regular-season title.

"We know how difficult it is to sweep anybody in our conference, especially somebody as good as Tennessee Tech, but that's the goal," Bieser said. "We go out and try to win every game we can. We get good pitching, good defense and swing the bats, we've got a chance to possibly do something this weekend."