Tiger Baseball Competes in First Annual Tiger Cup

Captains for Team Blood- Josh Kaplan, Cal Slusarz

Captain for The Men In Black- Dalton Boucher

Wittenberg baseball played the first annual Tiger Up Cup Game last week at Carleton Davidson Stadium. The intersquad game was played on Wittenberg's family weekend, as the day was full of high-level competition on both sides. 

The 9-inning game concluded when Shane Harris recorded the final out of the ball game with a routine fly out in left field.  Dalton Boucher slammed the door for The Men In Black and the game ended at an 8-6 final with The Men In Black coming out on top for the first annual Tiger Up Cup Game. Team blood had the lead until the 6^th inning when David Hall came up for The Men In Black with the bases loaded to hit a bases clearing double and give his team the lead and they never looked back. Corbin Dennis suffered the loss in the game going 1.1 innings, giving up 5 runs on 5 hits while walking 3.  Tanner Combs was your winning pitcher going 1 scoreless inning, a Strikeout and not allowing a base runner.

The Men In Black started the scoring off right away in the top half of the first when Brad Malott singled, Dalton Boucher walked and Adam mays came around to hit a 2-out RBI single to give his team the lead.  The bottom half of the inning Team Blood cut the lead in half.  Cal Slusarz hit a single followed by a walk by Josh Kaplan and Jace Barga knocked in a run with a 2-out single of his own.  Team Blood wasn't done, after holding The Men In Black to a scoreless top half of the second, they put 2 runs up on the board in the bottom half of the second.  Noble Moore lead things off with a single, Patrick Kenny singled behind him, and Ryan Probst came up to hit an RBI single with another run coming across on a fielding error. 

The Men in Black were blanked in the top half of the third but Team Blood wasn't finished. Andrew Hammond walked and came around to score on a Slusarz double for Team Blood to increase their lead to 4-2. 

Pitching then started to shut down the two offenses as Noble Moore (2, 3) Pitched 2 scoreless frames for Team Blood. Brandon Beegle pitched a scoreless frame in the bottom half of the 4^th followed by Ben Princic pitching a scoreless frame in the bottom half of the 5^th for The Men In Black. Luke Campbell pitched a scoreless top half of the 4^th and Kai Leisher put up another zero for Team Blood in the top of the 5^th.

The top of the 6^th is where The Men In Black took the lead and didn't look back.  Blake Eckert lead off with a walk, followed by a Beegle single, James Miller walked and then David Hall hit a bases clearing double to give The Men In Black a 5-4 lead.  The Men In Black weren't done in that inning.  Hall then came around to score on an RBI single by Malott and Boucher knocked Malott in to take a 7-4 lead heading into the bottom of the 6^th.  Tanner Combs took full advantage of pounding the strike zone and getting the win as he shut Team Blood down in the bottom of the 6^th to seize the momentum. 

The Men In black scratched across another run in the top of the 8^th when Andrew Shanor lead things off with a walk and Avery Hogue came around to knock him in with a single.  The Men In Black took a commanding 8-4 lead heading into the bottom of the 8^th.

Team Blood had some fight left in them as they were able to cut the deficit in half with Solo Home Runs by Slusarz and Tim Bates.  The two Homeruns were not enough to spark a comeback as Dalton Boucher came in the bottom of the 9^th to seal the deal and close it out for The Men In Black.

The player of the game went to David Hall and the Pitcher of the game went to Tanner Combs.  The Men In Black etched their name in the Tiger Up Cup and is the first ever champions of the Tiger Up Cup Game.