St. Marys Insurance, held to seven runs through their first twelve innings of the St. Marys Men League Championship series, exploded for 14 runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to rally from a 10-4 deficit to win 18-10 and tie their best of five championship series with the Allegheny Coatings Goats at 1-all at the Robin Road Softball Complex Wednesday night.
SMI, looking for their second league championship and first title since 2012, sent 17 batters to the plate, scoring 14 times on 15 hits to take control of the game in the bottom of the sixth inning. Kurt Eckert, Nathan Liggett, Alex Wendel, Tony Chiodo, Ben Cortina and Rudy Gleixner all had 2 hits in the inning. Eckert homered and Liggett and TJ Briendel both doubled during the outburst.
After falling behind 3-0 in the first, the Goats started to methodically score every inning and seemed primed to pull away as they did in the opening game. An error and a sac fly got the Goats on the board in the second. They took the lead in the third thanks mainly to a three run homerun by Justin Quiggle to make it 6-3.
Following a Jake Cortina dinger in the bottom of the third that cut the lead to 6-4, Coatings added a run in the fourth and three in the top of the sixth to lead 10-4, setting up SMI’s big inning.
Eckert hit a two-run double in the first inning and later scored to give SMI the early 3-0 lead.
Leading SMI was Eckert and Jake Cortina, both going 3 for 4 and hitting a homerun. Liggett finished 4 for 4 and Ben Cortina and Wendel both added 3 hits each to help the winning cause.
Quiggle led the Goats with a 2 for 3 performance that included the homerun and 3 RBI’s. Ricky Pearsall, Derek Meyer and Vince Jacob also finished 2 for 3. Jacob’s two hits were a double and a triple and Meyer added a double for the losers.
Game three will be Thursday night at 6:30 pm. Game four will be Monday night at 6:30, and game five, if needed, will be played next Tuesday night at the Robin Road Complex.