BASEBALL: Pinckneyville-Du Quoin defends Wooden Bat crown at Steeleville
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The Pinckneyville-Du Quoin Senior American Legion team successfully defended their crown at the Harold Harmsen Wooden Bat Classic on Friday, finishing off a 3-0 tournament by beating Marion Post 147 6-3 at the Field of Dreams in Steeleville.
Posts 2504 & 647 knocked off Sparta and Steeleville earlier in the week and got on the board fast against Marion, which had dropped both their games at the Classic heading into the finale.
Bryant Shute doubled in the top of the first and scored on a one-out double by Brett Warchol. Nate Boss followed with a sacrifice fly to right that brought in Adam Barczewski, who had walked, for a 2-0 Pinckneyville-Du Quoin lead off of Post 147 starter Aaron Hancock.
Hancock doubled off of 2504/647 starter Evan Chapman in the bottom of the second, then scored after two passed balls to make it 2-1.
Pinckneyville-Du Quoin added to their lead in the top of the fifth, starting with a one-out double by Barczewski followed by a triple from Brandon George. With two down in the inning Boss drove in his second run of the day with a single, then Marian Brammeier and C.J. Opp also had base hits to put 2504/647 ahead 6-1.
Marion stranded men on base in every inning after the second, squeezing out a run in the fifth on hits from Cody Smith and Kyle Mitchell and another in the seventh on singles from Dayton Tripp, Kurt Dixon and Nate Webb.
Chapman, however, was good enough for the win giving up nine hits and a walk with seven strikeouts in the complete game effort.
Eight different Pinckneyville-Du Quoin players had hits off Post 147: Brammeier (2-3), Shute (1-4, 2B), Barczewski (1-3, 2B, BB), George (1-4, 3B, RBI), Boss (1-2, SAC, 2 RBI), Opp (1-2, BB), Warchol (1-4, RBI) and Travis Chapman (1-3).
Marion got two hits apiece from Webb (2-4) and Alex Andros (2-3). Smith (1-4, 2B), Mitchell (1-4), Dixon (1-3, BB), Hancock (1-3) and Tripp (1-3) had the others.
Pinckneyville-Du Quoin travels to Sparta on Monday for a 4:30 p.m. meeting.
<element id="paragraph-1" type="body"></element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[</group><group id="2D8E2F07-E3B5-49A5-9FF3-343074C36411" type="seoLabels">