By Johnny Stocker

The Hastings Hawks were busy this past week, which was capped off by a weekend trip up to Stearns County, a traditional hotbed of Class C townball to participate in the 2022 Omann Insurance Invitational, hosted by the Sartell Muskies and the St. Stephen Steves. But before they could get on the road, they had a tough challenge last Wednesday, when the Burnsville Bobcats came to Veterans park. Burnsville came in ranked as the #9 team in Class B and was a 2021 State tournament participant.

The Hawks were looking to save arms for the weekend, so they turned to 2021 Raiders graduate Devin Peterson to get his first career start, and he responded with a very good outing. Peterson went five solid innings, giving up a single run in the third inning, surrendering four hits while striking out five and walking two.

Meanwhile on the offensive side of things, the middle of the Hawks lineup staked them to an early lead. In the first inning, Isaac Flynn singled, took second on an error, and then was driven in by a Cole Benson single to make the score 1-0 Hawks. After the Bobcats tied it up in the top of the third inning, Jake Biermaier walked to lead off the bottom of the frame, which was followed up by a Jordy Horsch single. Jason Greeder moved both up with a bunt, but then a hard grounder by Flynn got Biermaier caught off third base. He was eventually tagged out but stayed in a rundown long enough to move both runners up. Then with two outs, Benson followed up with another solid two out single to drive in two more and give the Hawks a 3-1 lead. However, the Bullpen got into a bit of trouble in the later innings. After getting a run in the sixth, the Bobcats put together three runs off three hits and an error with reliever Douglas Nordine on the hill to take a 5-3 lead into the late innings. The Hawks went down quietly their last three times at bat and ended up on the wrong side of a hard fought 5-3 game.

Friday afternoon, the Hawks headed up I-94 to Sartell and St. Stephen, two towns in the St. Cloud Metropolitan area to participate in a weekend tournament. The 8-team tournament boasted a very impressive field, consisting of one Class A team, three Class B teams, and four Class C teams, five of which competed in the 2021 state tournament. So, this looked to be a good test for the Hawks heading into the heart of their schedule, coming up in June and July. Manager Shawn Matson turned to Tommy Ritt to start the opener on Friday night against the co-host St. Stephen Steves. This game was played in Sartell as the St. Stephen park has no lights to allow for night games. After three scoreless outings to start Ritt’s Hawks career, things didn’t go exactly as planned this time. The Hawks got off to a slow start to the weekend, as Ritt struggled a bit to locate, and the Hawks defense made a couple of errors behind him in the first inning and missed a couple more plays they’d probably tell you they should have had that ended up as base hits.

After the dust had settled, the Hawks were down 3-0 before stepping up to the plate for the first time. Being that all these tournament games were only seven innings, that hill was even taller than it would normally be, and the Hawks just couldn’t get anything going offensively all night, scratching together only one run as Nick Horsch and Jordy Horsch pulled off a delayed double steal with Jordy going to second, and Nick breaking for home on the throw. Ritt settled down in the next three innings allowing only one more run, and Dennis Reinhardt closed things allowing one run in three solid innings, but the damage had already been done early and the Hawks dropped into the consolation bracket with a 5-1 loss.

The following day the Hawks traveled about 10 miles down the road to St. Stephen, Minnesota to take on the Class B Brainerd Bees. This was a park with a little bit of history to it, as it’s been in use for almost 100 years having been built in the late 1920s. Matson turned to one of his vets and top pitchers for this one, lefty Jordan Jeske. That decision paid off big time as Jeske had his stuff working all afternoon, carving through the lefty heavy Bees lineup, throwing six shutout innings, allowing six hits and two walks while striking out eight. Pat Rough pitched a scoreless seventh to end the game as the Hawks won 5-0.

On the offensive side of things, the Hawks played a bit of smallball on Saturday, managing only five hits, but drew nine walks and one hit batter in six innings to put up runs in every inning except for the first and second. Standout offensive performers included Jake Sandquist, who continued his torrid offensive start with two of the Hawks five hits and a walk, scoring once and driving in one. Cory Wolters also reached twice and scored twice, and every starter got on base at least once, except for Jeske, who still managed to contribute to his own cause on the hill with an RBI groundout.

Sunday afternoon it was back to Sartell to take on the other tournament co-host, the Sartell Muskies. Sartell is ranked #5 in Class C and is a perennial Class C state championship contender, so it was another nice test for the Hawks, and they passed it with flying colors coming through with a 4-2 victory. Matson turned to Max Bundschu to take the hill this time and was rewarded with another strong performance. Max went six innings, picking up the win giving up two earned runs on six hits, striking out four and walking two.

After opening the game with two scoreless innings, the Hawks broke through in the bottom of the third. With one out, Flynn reached on an error, followed by a Jeske single, and a Benson walk. Sandquist then drew another walk to drive in the first run after a terrific battle, where he was down 0-2 and fouled off a bunch of pitches to keep the AB alive. Noah Paulseth followed that up with a solid single up the middle to give the Hawks a 2-0 lead.

After Bundschu gave up a run on a couple singles in the fourth, Sandquist and Paulseth smoked back-to-back doubles in the bottom of the fifth, followed by an Evan Khrin single to put the Hawks up 4-1. In the bottom of the fifth, Bundschu found himself in a jam, loading the bases on a Hawks error, a hit batsman, and a single. However, he got the next batter to hit a sharp grounder to Khrin at third base who went home to get the first out, and after a walk to the next batter got Sartell’s second run across, he induced the nine-hitter to roll over to Flynn at second, who took the ball to the bag himself and started a double play to end the threat.

Nick Horsch gave up only a single in the seventh to record his first save of the season, and the Hawks managed to win the consolation bracket after a tough start to the weekend. The championship trophy for the tournament went to the Class B New Market Muskies, who defeated the Class B Forest Lake Brewers 7-1 in the final.

Overall, it was a great weekend for the Hawks and a healthy contingent of friends and family who made the trip up for part or all of the weekend. It was also a great team building experience for the club, which besides preparing the team for tournament situations at the end of the year is the other key advantage to participating in a tournament like this. By one count, 16 players were in the dugout for Sunday’s game, which is just an excellent thing to see for a team that had trouble getting nine guys together for road games as recently as 3-4 years ago.

The Hawks record now stands at 6-6 on the season. Up next, the boys have a couple of very important games this week as they open their Class C CCVL schedule. First up on Wednesday night it’s a trip down to Lake City to take on the Lake City Serpents at 7:30 p.m., followed up by a game down in Red Wing against the Red Wing Aces Saturday afternoon at 4:00 p.m.

The biggest draw of amateur baseball, or ‘townball’ is the closeness of the players and the fans. The baseball is entertaining and fun, but the camaraderie is the best. Fans, friends, family and players all hanging out enjoying the outdoors and each other. This is something so very unique to Minnesota and Wisconsin. Photo courtesy of Jason Greeder.