As the legendary New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

In the first game of a three game series against the Warren Blue Devils, the Lake Forest Scouts showcased a lot of talent at the beginning of the game, but unraveled slowly towards the end of the contest. Warren’s offense began to click at the end of the game, resulting in a walk-off win in six innings due to darkness. 

After Warren took an early 2-0 lead in the first inning, the Scouts offense began to feast on the Blue Devils’ starting pitcher, Riley Kochen. Caleb Durbin opened the scoring with two outs in the second inning on a two run RBI single to right field. Later in the second, Drew Golde got in on the action with the Scouts’ second two-run RBI single to left field.

In the third, Lake Forest got after Riley Kochen again. Charlie Reinkemeyer gave the Scouts their first run of the inning on a bunt single to the shortstop position scoring Paul Turrelli, extending their early lead to three. After Johnny Salm hit a RBI single to right, Caleb Durbin knocked yet another two run single to right field giving him four RBI’s in only three innings. After the third, Warren’s head coach decided to pull Kohcen and place Jeff Stajduhar on the mound.

The tides turned in favor of Blue Devils come the halfway point of last night’s game when Stajduhar shut out the Scouts in the top of the fourth and the Blue Devils began to rally in the bottom half of the inning. Play by play, Warren began to sneak back into the game. After a few singles and a couple fielder’s choice situations, Warren had cut the lead to two runs. Unfortunately, they weren’t done. In the bottom half of the fifth, Warren tacked on two more runs on bases loaded walks, which tied the game at 8.

The game was shortened to 6 innings due to darkness, so the game likely would be made up on another day if nobody scored. Jeff Stajduhar walked the first two Scouts batters, then Andrew Gough dropped a sacrifice bunt moving the two base runners to third. Stajduhar, however, registered back to back strikeouts to end the Scouts chances of taking the lead in the top of the 6th. In the final half inning of the game, Warren had men on first and second with two outs, but the runner on second, Vic Perez, stole third. Perez ended up crossing home on a two out single to seal the victory over the Lake Forest Scouts by the final score of 9-8 winning in walk off fashion.

So what happened to the Scouts’ six run lead? The first thing that should be mentioned is that reliever Jeff Stajduhar was terrific. In fact, he didn’t give up a hit in the three innings he pitched. Since the Lake Forest’s offense was shut down, Warren was able to gain momentum on the flip side resulting in the comeback victory.

The great thing about the sport of baseball is that when a team loses a heartbreaking game, that same team can usually come back the next day and get revenge on the opponent they faced the previous day. The Lake Forest Scouts will be in action tomorrow evening against the Warren Blue Devils again at West Campus. Come support your Lake Forest Scouts tomorrow as they search for revenge against Warren.