Cape Legion baseball begins regional tournament with 2-0 loss to Louisiana team

Cape Girardeau Post 63 Senior Legion's Trent Unterreiner takes batting practice Monday at Capaha Park.

BEN MATTHEWS

In its regional tournament opener, the Cape Girardeau Ford and Sons Post 63 Senior Legion baseball team struggled to get anything going at the plate and suffered another opening-game defeat.

Gonzales, Louisiana, Post 81 scored single runs in the sixth and seventh inning to claim a 2-0 win over Post 63 on Wednesday in the Mid-South Regional Tournament at Kirsch-Rooney Stadium in New Orleans.

To win the double-elimination tournament and advance to the Senior Legion World Series for the first time in program history, Cape (31-12) will have to go undefeated the rest of the way. This team has done it before, winning five consecutive games to take the zone tournament title. Later, it reached the state championship game after losing the opener.

First, Cape has to turn around and win an elimination game at 9:30 a.m. today against Columbia, Tennessee.

Austin Dill took the hard-luck loss for Cape, going the distance and giving up seven hits and two walks while striking out seven. Post 63 mustered just three hits, two by Joseph Baker, and three walks. It never had a runner advance past second base in its first regional game since 1994.

A two-out RBI double by Jack Merifield put Post 81 ahead 1-0 in the sixth. It added an insurance run an inning later on another two-out base hit, this time a Preston Thiash single. Dwan Guice was the wininng pitcher, tossing 5 1/3 three-hit innings, striking out five and walking three. Harrison Hutson and Thiash combined to pitch 1 2/3 hitless innings in relief.

WP -- Dwan Guice. LP -- Austin Dill. 2B -- Jack Merifield (G). Multiple hits -- Gonzales: Jordan Badame 2-3. Cape: Joseph Baker 2-3.