Opening Day: Baseball team drops first home game to Madonna
Sunshine, baseball chatter and the ping sound from the bat hitting the ball filled the air around Theunissen Stadium as the Central Michigan baseball season played its first home game of the season.
The Chippewas lost to Madonna 6-3 in front of 289 fans that still seemed to enjoy the weather Tuesday afternoon.
“I didn’t have anything to do so I thought I’d come by see how the team looks this season,” said sophomore Andrew Boerma of Remus. “The weather was pretty nice too, little windy, but nice.”
The Chippewas (6-10) had a 3-1 lead in fifth inning with two outs. But a single, couple walks and a wild pitch allowed by CMU freshman starter Jordan Foley the bases were loaded for the Crusaders (15-9).
Madonna then hit a two-run RBI double down the right field line tying the game at five, after five innings.
Once again with two outs the Crusaders rallied in the seventh this time with freshman Sean Renzi on the mound.
Renzi only lasted two-thirds of an inning allowing three earned runs on two hits and two walks.
“I thought Foley pitched well. He had a kid struck out with the bases loaded and didn’t get it, then he hit one down the line, that was a real tough chain of events,” head coach Steve Jaksa said. “Renzi struggled a little bit today, more so than other outings and we had to bring in Jon (Weaver).”
It looked like CMU would have it easy early on with three runs in the first inning off solo home run by junior shortstop Jordan Dean, and two runs scored from a dropped pop fly.
CMU failed to get a run the rest of the game.
“Got to give Madonna a lot of credit they played hard the whole game,” senior catcher William Arnold said. “The weather was awesome and we had a nice turnout from our fans, it just didn’t quite turn out the way we hoped.”
The Chippewas made a threat in the bottom of the ninth, but failed to get anything across the plate.
They're back in Theunissen Stadium Wednesday at 3:05 p.m. against Davenport before they head to Tennessee State this weekend.
“We’ll be fine, we’re a good team and we know that, we’ve got to just play nine innings,” Arnold said.
