BASEBALL: Hit parade continues for Murphsyboro, P-DQ second at District Tournament
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Up 6-1 after the first inning, Pinckneyville-Du Quoin seemed to be in command of Thursday night's championship game of the Senior American Legion 25th District Tournament in Steeleville. Nobody told Murphysboro, however, as Post 127 rallied back to tie the score by the end of the fourth, then overwhelmed Posts 2504 & 647 with a fourteen-run top of the sixth before winning 20-8 in seven innings.
Murphysboro had 18 hits on Thursday, giving them 37 total hits in their two games against Pinckneyville-Du Quoin in the tournament.
"That's not what I expected," said 2504/647 head coach Sean Patrick. "But that's the fun part about this game, you can get your butt kicked one day and come back the next day and do it all over again."
After three hits in Wednesday's meeting between the two teams, Murphy's Aiden McMahan quickly became a thorn in the side of 2504/647 again on Thursday by leading off the game with a solo home run off of Evan Chapman.
The first five Pinckneyville-Du Quoin batters reached base in the bottom of the inning including a leadoff triple by Bryant Shute and RBI singles from Nate Boss and Kyle Mueller. Travis Chapman and C.J. Opp then drove in runs on fielder's choice plays in front of a two-out double by Marian Brammeier and back-to-back RBI base hits by Adam Barczewski and Shute. After a wild first inning, P-DQ led 6-1.
"We haven't hit consistently in a while, and all of a sudden I think it scared us when we did in the first, and that was it," Patrick said. "I think we were so surprised with ourselves and what we did in the first inning that there was nothing left after that."
Post 127 began chipping away almost immediately in the second inning. A pair of leadoff walks to Mitchell Rose and Brent Goforth both came in to score on Jacob Baird's two-out double, then McMahan struck again with a two-run bomb to make it 6-5.
Patrick had seen enough of McMahan after that, instructing E. Chapman to walk him intentionally in the fourth when he came around to score on a double by Gavyn Ellet, and again in the sixth when a total of nineteen Murphysboro hitters came to the plate.
Ten of those nineteen batted with nobody out, all of them scoring before the inning was over. E. Chapman exited down 8-6 with the based loaded, then Shute relieved him before being pulled at 13-6. T. Chapman eventually mopped up the rest of the mess, but the hole was too deep for Pinckneyville-Du Quoin to climb out of.
"(Evan Chapman) gave us a fantastic effort on Saturday, he kept us close for a little while today and it just got out of hand and that happens sometimes," Patrick said.
McMahan finished 3-for-4 with a pair of homers, a pair of walks, four RBI and five runs scored to lead Murphy in the win.
Shute (3-5, 3B, R, RBI), Boss (2-5, R, RBI), Mueller (1-4, RBI), T. Chapman (1-4, RBI), Brammeier (1-3, 2B, R), Barczewski (1-2, RBI), Brandon George (1-3, BB, R, RBI) and Brett Warchol (3-4, R) had hits for Pinckneyville-Du Quoin.
Despite the loss, Pinckneyville-Du Quoin will still be moving on to the 5th Division Tournament where they will play in round one on Monday at 7:00 p.m. at Rigdon Field in the Perry County Fairgrounds.
"We hope that because it's in Pinckneyville that people from all three of the towns that are represented on our team will come out and support us and support these young guys," said Patrick. "They devote a lot of time to this and they deserve to have people come out and watch them play."
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