Baseball: Gold Takes Game One of World Series
October 09, 2004 09:45 PM | General
October 9, 2004
Morgantown, W.Va. - The West Virginia University baseball team's Gold squad took the first game of the annual Blue-Gold World Series Saturday, Oct. 9, defeating the Blue 5-3 in 13 innings.
Senior captain Lee Fritz led the Gold to victory with a double in the top of the 13th inning that scored two runs and gave his team the win. Fritz went 5-6 on the evening with two RBI's and a sacrifice bunt.
The game also raise Fritz's fall batting average to .473 with 16 RBI's and 19 runs scored.
Assistant coach Bruce Cameron's Gold squad took the lead early when freshman outfielder Adrian Sykes knocked home Trent Ridgley. Fritz would score in the fourth to help the Gold increase the lead to 2-0.
The Blue team came fighting back in the bottom of the fourth when redshirt freshman Adam Kelley hit a single that scored Mike Schmidt, cutting the lead to one.
After a Trent Ridgley RBI in the seventh the Gold took a 3-1 advantage. Then in the bottom of the inning the Blue trimmed the lead again to one with a Rob Whatlock sacrifice fly that scored Justin Richards.
The Blue tied up the contest in the bottom of the eighth when Kelley scored on a fielder's choice.
With the bases full and only one out in the bottom of the ninth the Blue team seemed to have a chance of stealing the game away from the Gold. Cameron decided to put in right hander Kevin Korzum to try to get Marty Fagler out of the jam. The coaching move worked to perfection.
Kelley belted a hard shot to the shortstop Doug Nelms who initially dropped the ball. Without panicking Nelms picked up the ball, tagged the runner going from second to third and also had the awareness to also tag second and get the force out to end the inning.
After Fritz's double in the top of the 13th Brendan Bergerson got Justin Jenkins to fly out to stop any further damage.
Korzum continued his dominance of the Blue batters though, striking out Tyler Kuhn and forcing Travis D'Amico and Stan Posluszny to line out to end the game.
Korzum earned the win by pitching 4 and two-thirds shutout innings, striking out five and allowing only one hit.
Game two of the series gets underway at Hawley Field tomorrow at 2 p.m.
