A pitcher’s duel and an incredible display of hitting highlighted an American Legion baseball doubleheader in Auburn on Saturday morning.

In what was a tale of two games, Rogers Post swept a doubleheader with Bessey Motors, 1-0 and 13-2.

In the first game, Rogers Post pitcher Damien St. Pierre pitched a complete-game shutout, throwing seven scoreless innings of five-hit ball.

Rogers needed every pinpoint pitch of St. Pierre’s, as the Auburn side was able to squeeze out one lone run against Bessey pitcher Blake Slicer, who also threw a complete game.

“Damien was fantastic for us, in terms of hitting his spots,” Rogers coach Dave Jordan said. “We did a nice job of backing him up defensively, because they’ve got some really good hitters. I thought we did a nice job of making some tough pitches in some tight spots.”

In the first inning, St. Pierre worked out of a jam with a runner on third, something he did five different times throughout the game.

In the bottom half of the inning, Rogers was able to play some small ball of their own to push a runner to third, but was unable to make anything of the situation.

After another scoreless inning by both sides, Rogers scored their lone run of the game when Brandon Varney hit a single into right field. Next up was Tyler Blanchard, who crushed a double off the wall in left-center that scored Varney. Slicer maneuvered his team out of the inning, but the damage was done.

“Started off a little rough, one kid got a pretty good hit, missed my spots,” St. Pierre said. “But other than that I did pretty good. I just focused on one pitch at a time, don’t look forward to the next one.”

In the second game, Rogers’ bats came alive, and pushed the home team to a mercy-rule-shortened, five-inning win.

As though there were no outfielders, Rogers Post got moving early, with their first eight hitters getting on base to start the game, the first four scoring runs. Jordan said that sometimes, hitting can become contagious.

“If you start seeing your teammates getting the bat on the ball, you can start finding some holes,” Jordan said. “We did a nice job offensively, team-wise, hitting.”

Bessey got on the board in the second inning, scoring two runs of its own by accumulating four walks and a single in the inning, all coming at the expense of pitcher Gavin Bates.

Bates would only allow three more base runners over the next three innings, however.

“Being able to get out of a doubleheader by just throwing two guys, as a team we are very happy for that,” Jordan said. “We are nursing some guys, so both Gavin and Damien did a good job of providing some good innings.”

At the plate, the bats never cooled for Rogers.

The top of the order scored three more runs in both the second and third innings, while as a team scoring five total in the third off of two walks, two singles and three doubles. The one through four batters for Rogers combined to hit 13-15, which forced Bessey coach Lance Bean to pull starter Bailey West from the game after two-and-a-third innings pitched.

“We made some mistakes in the second game, some mental errors, and they hit the ball well. We didn’t do what we needed to do, you can’t give a team like that extra bases,” Bean said. “We just move on from it, can’t forget it, just move on.”

Rogers first baseman Jarod Norcross-Plourde went 3-for-4 in the second game, and said the team’s hitting was a matter of swinging early.

“I think we just jumped on them early, kept getting runs in, and that really worked for us,” Norcross-Plourde said. “I think we just kept swinging the bat good.”

Copy the Story Link