Rifle sweeps Palisade in WSL matchup

Phil Sandoval
Grand Junction Correspondent
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
April 20, 2008

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GRAND JUNCTION, Colorado — Joy.

It’s a feeling Rifle hasn’t enjoyed much this baseball season. Until Saturday.

The Bears’ stunning doubleheader sweep of Western Slope League leader Palisade brought a lot of spirit back to the Rifle dugout. Along with a good feeling going to the final week of the regular season.

What caused the turnaround in a Bears’ team which had struggled for most of the 2008 season?

“I told them to just go out and have fun and play with some energy,” said head coach Troy Phillips when asked about the 13-6, 10-0 mercy rule victories.

And Rifle certainly put Phillips’ words into play. The 23-run, 25-hit onslaught the Bears racked up on the four pitchers Palisade used in the two games were team season-highs in both departments.

As starting pitchers Kyle Bond and Alex Haynes rolled their way to easy wins, the emotion in Palisade’s dugout turned gloomy.

Make that very gloomy.

The losses, combined with Delta’s sweep of Glenwood Springs, knocked the Bulldogs out of first place in the WSL for the first time this season.

“Rifle came in and hit the ball. Give them all the credit in the world. But we weren’t focused all day long. Hopefully our kids will learn from this,” said Palisade head coach Steve Moore.

At least the Bulldogs remain in the hunt for a post-season berth.

That’s going to be a stretch for Rifle, which raised its record to 6-5 in league, but still needs lots of help to secure fourth place and the last available Class 4A state tournament slot that goes with it.

That might happen. It wasn’t on Phillips’ mind when he spoke to the Bears before the first game.

“I told them we can’t worry about making the playoffs or not. Because we’re in a situation where we are going to have to win every game to have a shot,” Phillips recalled.

Against Palisade Rifle looked like a playoff team.

After spotting the Bulldogs a 2-0 lead in the first inning of game one, the Bears scored five runs in the second. Ernesto Mendoza, Dwight Cerise and Zack Whitmore all had extra-base hits in the rally.

The ability to create big innings allowed Rifle not to trail again the rest of the day.
A six-run explosion in the seventh upped a 7-3 lead to a 10-run margin. Rifle sent 11 batters to the plate in a run where the Bears took advantage of four Palisade errors in the inning.

Rifle’s game two rout developed slowly.

Bond scored on a groundout in the first. Cody Chick added the Bears’ second run the next inning with an RBI single. In the third Kory Kassak doubled the Bears’ two-run lead to 4-0 on a two-run base hit that scored Bond and Asa Fix.

Rifle distanced themselves with five runs in the fourth. The Bears rapped out six hits in the inning and chased off starter Jesse Brannon in the process.

Bond doubled and scored. Mendoza whacked in two runs. Haynes, Kassak and Daniel Maldonado each had RBIs.

As the perfect ending, a Bond single — his third hit in four game-two at-bats — forced the early ending when Zack Whitmore, who led the fifth with a long triple of Palisade reliever Tyler Brumback, scored.