WINTHROP – Forrest Dwyer admitted he was a little nervous when Winthrop coach Marc Fortin told him to intentionally walk Lisbon’s Andy Ouellette to load the bases in the top of the seventh of a one-run game.

The move put the potential winning run into scoring position, and brought up Lisbon’s diminutive second baseman, Nick Jones.

“(Jones was) the one kid I walked (before the seventh),” Dwyer said with a laugh. “(Fortin) gave me a heart attack when he did that.”

But Jones did what the Greyhounds had been doing for most of the game against Dwyer – hit a pop up into the stiff wind blowing in. Dwyer took off from the mound toward third base, called for it, settled under it and squeezed his glove shut to preserve a 3-2 win for the Ramblers.

“I had to still buckle down, and they’d been popping them out all game, so it was good to get that last one, too,” Dwyer said.

Seventeen of Lisbon’s 21 outs were in the air, which, despite the wind gusts, presented little problem for Winthrop’s defense.

“We had a lot of lazy swings. We didn’t attack the ball well at the plate,” Lisbon coach Randy Ridley said. “Forrest is a very good pitcher, but we didn’t swing the bats like we could have, and it showed with a lot of fly ball outs.”

Things got a little more interesting when the Greyhounds hit the ball on the ground. The Ramblers committed four throwing errors, including two that led to an unearned run off Dwyer in the third.

A throwing error by Lisbon in the first inning put the Ramblers (6-1) on the board first against starter Kyle Neagle. Bryan Lawson made it 2-0 with an RBI single to left-center in the second, but a strong relay throw by third baseman Mike Unterkoefler cut down Easton Morang at the plate to keep it a two-run game.

Lisbon (5-2) cut the lead in half in the third. Alex Hall reached and took second on a throwing error. With one out, Neagle hit a grounder to second baseman Lawson, whose throw seemed to get pushed towards right field by a burst of wind and sailed past first base, allowing Neagle to score.

Neagle and reliever Frank Angelico didn’t give up a hit after the second inning. Neagle walked the first two batters of the bottom of the third but worked his way out of the jam. Winthrop scored what proved to be the winning run in the fifth when David Ricker drew a leadoff walk, stole second, advanced to third on a Jordan Conant grounder, then scored on Dwyer’s sacrifice fly to right.

Dwyer, who bounced back nicely from a rough outing in last week’s loss to Livermore Falls, worked around an error and a single in the fourth, then an error and his only walk in the sixth.

“He was getting his first pitch strikes in, and those are key. Get those guys in a hole,” Fortin said.

In the seventh, he surrendered a leadoff walk to Alex Hall, then a one-out single to Neagle. Unterkoefler hit a soft liner to short, then Angelico lofted a pop fly that fell in to no man’s land in short right to score Hall with the second run and put runners at first and third.

With Ouellette due up, Fortin told Dwyer to issue the free pass.

“There was pressure on Forrest – bases loaded, he’s got to pitch to this little guy and there’s no room for him,” Winthrop coach Marc Fortin said. “That’s serious pressure, but he came through.”