May 22/14

Derek Martin ( Crookston Daily Times)
Posted May. 22, 2014 @ 10:59 am 

CROOKSTON

The Crookston Reds baseball team rallied from two down in the bottom of the ninth to post three runs and beat the East Grand Forks Heaters 7-6 on opening day of the season for Crookston at Jim Karn Field.

Brady Arneson, a Fosston, Minn. native and freshman baseball player for University of Northwestern-St. Paul, which competes in the Division III Upper Midwest Athletic Conference (UMAC), scored from second on a poor throw by East Grand Forks to score the game-winning run.

"We had bases loaded with no outs and Dave Grabowski hit a sac fly and I scored," Reds player/coach Justin Johnson explained. "Then we had Paul Smith at third and Brady Arneson at first. Josh Edlund laid down a suicide squeeze and did an absolutely excellent job putting the ball on the grass. That moved Brady Arneson to second. Sam Brule hit a ball to third and the throw was a short hop to first. As soon as we saw the short hop I was giving Brady the go. With Brady's speed he scored from second for the game winner."

Taylor Morlan pitched five innings for the Reds, allowing two earned runs, three total, all in the fourth inning, on two hits and five walks. Matt Morin pitched the final four innings, allowing three earned runs on four hits and three walks.

"Taylor had the best game he's thrown as a Red in his career," Johnson said. "I didn't take Taylor out because he was pitching bad. It's too early in the season to go into the seventh or eighth. We are going to need Taylor, Matt, Bill Sullivan and Josh Edlund to pitch the majority of our games. I didn't want to overstretch him this early. I wasn't going to let Matt go into extras either."

East Grand Forks took a 3-0 lead in the fourth and added one in the eighth before Crookston got on the board in the bottom of the eighth, tying it with four runs.

"We finally wore their starter down," Johnson said. "We capitalized on an error or two. We had threatened most of the game last night. We had a lot of two-out rallies. It is a good sign because we are getting on base. It's nice we are getting runners on consistently like that. Hopefully we will keep getting these breaks and hopefully they come at the right time."

Smith led the Reds at the plate, hitting 2-of-3 with two walks, a run scored, and a stolen base. Edlund was 1-of-4 with three RBI and a run scored. Grabowski was 1-of-4 with two RBI and run scored. Brandon Kresl had the other RBI for the Reds. Arneson was 1-of-4 with two runs scored.

"As a team we executed excellently," Johnson said. "We did the small things, played good defense and good small ball. It took everybody to win that game. It was absolutely a full-out team effort."