Superior 6, Proctor 3
Duluth News Tribune, May 4, 2001

The Spartans treated the home fans with their first win of the year.
Keith [sic] Ritsche pitched a complete game, striking out five and allowing only two hits. One of the three runs against Ritsche in the seventh was earned.
Spencer Kelly broke a scoreless tie with a third-inning RBI double, and two batters later Kyle Peterson cleared the bases with a double. Paul Fredrickson added a solo homer in the fourth.
Superior is 1-6.

 

Ritsche, Spartans notch first victory
Superior Daily Telegram, May 4, 2001
by John Davy

Seeing only his second action of the season and his first on the mound, sophomore Kevin Ritsche got the Superior baseball team's first victory of the season Thursday night, as the Spartans stopped the Proctor Rails, 6-3.

Ritsche and Proctor's Ryan Walsh dueled through two innings as neither allowed a hit. Walsh retired the Spartans on four pitches in the first inning and got a strikeout in putting the Spartans down one, two, three in the second inning. Ritsche faced seven batters in the first two innings and registered two strikeouts. He then retired the side with two more strikeouts in the third inning, bringing the Spartans to bat in the bottom of the third inning.

Kevin Olson slammed a one-out single and Zach Brokaw drew a walk. A pop-out brought Spencer Kelly to the plate and with Olson running on the pitch, Kelly drilled a pitch to the right-center field gap. Olson scored and Brokaw moved to third. Keith Johnson drew a walk, loading the bases for Kyle Peterson, who blasted one to left field and off the top of the fence for a double. Three more Spartan runners crossed the plate and Superior took a 4-0 lead into the fourth inning.

Ritsche set the Rails down in order in the top of the fourth and Superior returned to the offense. Paul Fredrickson crashed a long home run to left-center. Ritsche reached on an error, stole second and moved to third on a wild pitch before scoring on Brokaw's sacrifice.

So Ritche went to work in the fifth inning with a 6-0 cusion. Kyle Lindstrom led off the inning with a bloop single to right-center field for the first hit off the tall right-hander. Lindstrom stole second and Luke Kohne walked.

Then Spartan second baseman Kevin Olson helped Ritsche out of a jam, scooping up a grounder, tagging Kohne on his way to second base and throwing to first in time for the double play. Although walking another batter, the SSHS hurler finally forced a ground out to end the inning without giving up a run.

A leadoff single by Johnson in the fifth got no support, nor did a decent start for Proctor in the sixth inning as the Rails' second and final base hit was followed by a walk before Ritsche bore down and retired the next three straight, two on pop-ups and one on a ground out. Superior's sixth inning was a three-and-out affair.

Then in the top of the seventh inning the Rails, without the benefit of a hit, plated three runs. Ritsche didn't help himself by walking Kohne, who was put out on a fielder's choice before Ritsche hit Ryan Anderson with a pitch. Then the defense around him unraveled. With Ryan Delucca, the last batter in the lineup at bat, Proctor executed a double steal, then Ritsche got Delucca lunging at a ball outside and in the dirt for strike three, the ball eluded the Spartan catcher and Delucca reached first and the runner on third scored, putting runners on first and third.

The ball found it way out of play and both runners advanced one more base. Anderson scored from third, Delucca moved to second and another Superior error allowed Delucca to score before Ritsche forced a flyout to center field to end the game.

"Ritsche pitched a pretty good game although he may have been getting tired near the end," said SSHS Coach Don Dembroski. "But in the sixth, a pitcher is already over the hump, so even though I thought about replacing him, but thought I'd let him try to finish up. He had pretty good velocity most of the game, only gave up two hits, but probably walked more than we'd like to see, but covered that up pretty well with a few strikeouts and some good defense behind him.

"It was also important he pitched the whole game for us. It helps take the load off our staff because of all the rain outs we've had, our pitching might be hurting every time we have to use more than one a game. Becaue we have a few games starting to pile up on us.

"We talked about a few things before the game, about getting some home runs and Fredrickson did that for us, and picking up runners by getting some key hits with two outs. We got that from Kelly and Peterson.

"Up to now we've been averaging about five errors a game. Against Proctor, we had two errors, so we improved there, but both errors were in the seventh inning and helped them get three runs, so we can see how much errors hurt us."

Both teams went in to the game without a win, so Dembroski and Proctor Coach Tim Rohweder knew something would break.

"Things took a bad turn for us in the first game of the season," said Rohweder, "and we haven't been able to get things turned around, but today, we showed a little spark in the seventh inning and hopefully have something to carry over to our next game. We started the season against Grand Rapids and were leading 4-3 late in the game and ended up losing 8-4, and we haven't been able to get anything going since then.

"But today I saw some improvement in our base running and defense, so we have some positives to take from this game. We still need to unwrap the bats and start hitting."