On a day when its defense resembled the Bad News Bears, Festus Post 253 relied on its powerful offense to muster enough runs to hold back Cape Girardeau Ford and Sons Post 63 in Saturday’s American Legion Zone 4 championship in Jackson.
Festus is scheduled to play the Zone 2-B champion in its first game in the state tournament at 8 p.m. today (July 27) at Liberty Park in Sedalia.
Post 253 held leads of 7-3 and 12-4, but couldn’t retire Cape Giradeau slugger Garrett Siebert until the end, or get out of its own way in the field, where at one point Festus had as many errors as hits (six).
Siebert finished the game 3-for-5 at the plate, and just missed hitting for the cycle, settling for a single, double and triple.
Festus pitchers Donovan McDonough and Austin Bearden gave way to Brennan Pryor in the eighth inning as Post 253 clung to a 13-9 lead. Pryor faced Siebert to lead off the eighth and got him to pop out to second baseman Jaden Courtois. With Cape Girardeau’s best hitter behind him, Pryor retired the next five batters and Festus (26-9) hung on to win the title.
“I just wanted to throw strikes,” said Pryor, who will be a senior at Festus High this fall. “I knew my team was behind me. I know my guys have my back at all times. I just go out there with the mentality to get it done.”
It was Post 253’s ninth straight win and punched its ticket to the state tournament in Sedalia for the first time since 2014. Festus is one of four AAA teams remaining in the state and starts play on Thursday. Post 253 has won five state titles, including a three-peat from 2009-2011.
“We played just well enough to win today,” Festus manager Zac Bone said. “We need to clean some things up because we know there are three really good baseball teams at state. You don’t get there by accident.”
Festus swept its way through the District 13 tournament with three wins, and did the same thing at the zone competition with a 9-1 win against Cape Girardeau (24-12) on July 19 and a 14-5 victory over Jackson on July 20, before the second win against Post 63, which had to win three games in two days to reach the zone final.
“We’re a gutsy team,” Cape Girardeau manager Josh Meyer said. “That’s the way we’ve been all season. We’re a never-say-die team and we’re going to play hard until the end. Give (Festus) credit because they swept through the winners bracket.”
But Cape Girardeau made Festus work for its title on another blistering hot day. With much of the state gripped in a heat wave, players endured temperatures over 100 degrees all week. Saturday’s final was moved back three hours because of the heat.
“This time of year you can always tell who wants to continue playing because it’s a grind with the heat,” Bone said. “It’s hot and dusty and you’ve played a lot of baseball. I think our guys do and we’re excited to go to state.
“I thought our kids responded well. Toughness was the theme of the week. We knew it was going to be hot. We were playing good baseball teams that could swing it up and down. We knew there was going to be a game where things didn’t go our way.”
Cape Girardeau struck first Saturday when Noah Arnzen singled off of McDonough and scored on a groundout by Trevor Haas in the first inning.
Undeterred, Post 253 answered by sending 11 batters against Post 63 starting pitcher Jake Vaught in its half of the first and scored five runs to take control. The first seven Festus batters reached base safely. Courtois led off with a double, then went to third on a wild pitch before Blain Prater struck out, but the third strike squirted through the Cape Girardeau catcher into the cavernous reaches behind home plate and Courtois scampered home to tie the game 1-1.
Festus found many ways to reach base in the first. Collin Mann walked and scored; Zac Meyer reached on a catcher’s interference call and scored; Cameron Beck hit a seeing-eye RBI single past shortstop and scored; and Sean McDowell was hit by a Vaught pitch and scored on Zach Richardson’s groundout. Vaught stemmed the damage when he got Prater to fly out to center field.
Post 63 kept chipping away though. Festus’ McDonough pitched five innings and limited the damage in each to just one run, except a scoreless fourth. Three of the four runs he allowed were unearned.
“Donovan was good,” Bone said. “Bearden was good. We didn’t catch the baseball behind the first two guys and put ourselves in tough situations. But we were able to get some big hits, like Jaden Courtois starting us out with a double. Blain got the big hit to cash some guys in and we took advantage of what they gave us.”
Leading 7-4, Festus needed another big inning to keep Cape Girardeau at bay and got it in the fifth with five more runs. The first five batters reached safely, this time against Cape Girardeau reliever Joe Baker, whose curveball kept Festus off balance. Baker’s defense let him down in the fifth when Mann reached on an error, and scored on a dropped pop up in the infield. Chandler Dix walked and scored, Courtois singled and scored on Prater’s RBI double and Meyer walked and scored when Baker walked Dix, who was batting for the second time in the inning, which ended with Festus up 12-5.
Cape Girardeau stormed right back with four runs in the sixth off of Bearden. Austin Dill singled with one out and Cooper Crosnoe walked. After Arnzen popped out to third base, Siebert singled to load the bases. Haas reached on an error and Dill scored. Brock Baugher got on after another error that allowed two runs to score. Haas eventually scored on a balk by Bearden and it was 13-8.
Baker sat Festus down 1-2-3 in its half of the sixth and appeared primed to complete the comeback when another Post 253 error allowed Ben Womack to reach safely to open the seventh. Womack scored on a single by Crosnoe and the Festus lead kept dwindling.
Festus tacked on an insurance run in its half of the seventh when McDowell doubled with one out and scored on a single by Richardson, who got caught in a rundown between first and second and was tagged out to end the frame.
Enter Pryor, who has started and pitched in middle relief as well as close this season. The lanky right-hander mopped up in the ninth when he induced the first two batters to ground out and Prater squeezed the zone championship in his glove when he dove to catch Brenden Wilkens’ fly ball to center.
“I thought this was about as poorly as we’ve played in a couple of weeks,” Bone said. “Having said that, I thought we made some good plays. I thought Cameron Beck had a tremendous week at shortstop. Blain Prater ran down some important baseballs in center field.”
Pryor advanced out of the zone tournament two years ago with the Post 253 junior team.
“It’s pretty special,” he said of this year’s team.