The Carthage College baseball team (6-4) swept a Sunday, March 10 doubleheader from Bethany Lutheran College (0-2) with a 20-2 decision in seven innings in the second game in Tucson, Ariz. The Red Men trounced the Vikings, 27-14 in seven innings, in the opening contest.
In the nightcap, Carthage took a 2-0 lead in the opening inning on a
Vince Schwartz RBI-triple and a run-scoring single by
Myles Farley. The Red Men added five more in the second to go up, 7-0. Among the five runs were a
Kyle Engstrom RBI-double and RBI-singles by both
Luke Beckmann and
Vince Schwartz. Bethany Lutheran scored one in the third to shave the lead to 7-1.
Carthage scored seven times in the third to take a 14-1 lead.
Cody Phelps drove in a run with a single, Schwartz a run with an infield grounder, Farley a run with a single, Levicki three with a bases-clearing double and
Matthew Pratscher the seventh run with a single. The Vikings made it 14-2 in the top of the fifth, but the Red Men tacked on six more in the bottom half for the final, 20-2 margin. In the fifth, Carthage collected RBIs from Pratscher on a single, Phelps with a single, Schwartz with a base on balls, Farley with a single, Levicki with a walk and
Clayton Taylor with an infield grounder.
The Red Men collected 20 hits in the nightcap. Schwartz led the way by going three-for-four with four runs scored, a double, a triple and four RBI. Farley went three-for-four with three RBI. Pratscher had three hits in four strips with two runs scored and two RBI, while Levicki drove in four runs. Klein went one-for-three, and his season batting average dropped to .591. For the day, Carthage collected 47 runs on 47 hits, including 15 for extra bases.
Pasquale Atteo (1-0) was the winning pitcher in the second game. He limited Bethany Lutheran to a pair of runs on six hits, three walks and eight strikeouts over seven innings for Carthage's first complete game of the season. Adam Fjerstad (0-1) took the loss for the Vikings and surrendered the first 14 runs on 13 hits and two walks.
"We actually faced some good pitching," said Carthage coach
Augie Schmidt IV, "but we had a hitters day. For some reason, we just came out swinging, and we hit the heck out of the ball the whole day. Every ground ball found a hole, and everything went our way. After getting a 10-run rule against us the day before, the guys responded really well. But 47 runs? I never saw that coming. It was a fun day for us, not so fun for them."
Carthage wraps up its spring trip to the Tucson Invitational on Monday with a 9 a.m. MST contest against Wesleyan University (0-1).
