BOTTINEAU — When Hunter Hagler entered in the third inning, it looked like his baseball career might be five innings from ending.
Trailing 3-0, Cando Post 79 had to put it all on the line.
Hagler was already at 43 pitches for the tournament.
“I had to keep that mindset that I was gonna keep going and keep going,” Hagler said. “My arm’s a little tired, but you’ve just got to keep going until you win.”
Hagler wound up shutting out Rugby over the final five innings to lead Cando to victory. He allowed just two hits.
Along with a timely fourth-inning rally, No. 3 seed Cando (10-9) came back to win 6-3 over No. 5 seed Rugby Post 23 on Wednesday at the Lumberyard.
“We’ve had some games like this where it’s a matter of time before our bats get going,” Cando head coach Jesse Vote said. “Hitting’s contagious, and we were able to string a couple together and put a little pressure on them.”
It was Cando’s third straight elimination victory to stay alive in the District 3 Legion baseball tournament.
“The biggest thing is pitching,” Vote said. “You have to, when you get into these games like this, it’s strategically trying to — you have to throw strikes. And you have to make the easy plays because you can’t give up extra pitches or waste extra pitches that you don’t have. And so every pitch is valuable and every play on defense is valuable. But the guys have hung in there, and they’ve given themselves a chance to get to Thursday.”
To start it off, Cando got all it could out of JD DuPreez, who entered having thrown 83 pitches in the tournament. He allowed a run-scoring single to Zack Selensky in the first inning and stranded the bases loaded. Rugby scored on an infield hit in the second inning, then loaded the bases again as DuPreez surpassed the limit of 135 pitches for the tournament.
DuPreez struck out the final batter he faced, but a wild pitch put Cando in a 3-0 hole.
The Bearcats struggled to square up Zack Schneibel’s breaking offerings. Hagler hit a two-out triple in the first, and Ian Westlind tapped a two-out single to put two in scoring position in the third, but Cando couldn’t cash in.
Schneibel collected five strikeouts through a fairly dominant 3 1/3 innings.
It all changed with a Kale Prouty hit-by-pitch.
“Anything can happen in this game,” Hagler said. “We just started hitting the ball and we started getting that momentum. We started getting loud and just went and got confidence.”
DuPreez collected the third Cando hit, and Sutton Larson looped a single into left field to get Cando on the board.
Facing an 0-2 count with the bases loaded, Sean Freund laid down a bunt. Rugby couldn’t get a handle on it as it went down for an infield hit. Leadoff hitter Brody Svir then came through with a two-run single down the left field line.
“When Brody’s head is on straight, he can do lots of good things for us,” Vote said. “He’s a vocal leader in the dugout, and gets guys going. I think he was having a little bit of a struggle today, but he finally found a hit there at a crucial time.”
Cando jolted ahead 4-3. After struggling to do much of anything against Schneibel in the first three innings, the Bearcats put up a four-spot.
“I think [Schneibel] just started getting tired, and we started figuring out what his ball does,” Hagler said. “So we started seeing that, and we just started putting the bat on the ball, and it went well.”
On the mound, Hagler struck out two batters to strand a pair in the third inning. He pitched a 1-2-3 fourth, then worked around a one-out double in the fifth.
He struck out two more while stranding a walk in the sixth.
“[Tuesday] didn’t go so well. I just had to adjust,” Hagler said of his pitching performance. “I was throwing up, throwing down, just everywhere. I just had to adjust on the mound and get used to it.”
Cando scored two key insurance runs on a dropped fly ball in center field in the bottom of the sixth. The insurance was hardly necessary, though, as Hagler threw a 1-2-3 seventh.
He threw 70 total pitches, striking out seven over five scoreless innings. It moved him to 113 pitches for the tournament.
“Finishing his baseball career on the mound and coming through…that’s pretty good for him to come in and shut things down,” Vote said.
Hagler assured at least one more baseball game in his career.
Cando battles No. 1 seed Devils Lake to complete Wednesday’s slate, with the winner advancing to face No. 2 seed Velva in Thursday’s district championship.
“We started off with that loss against Rolla; we were all down,” Hagler said. “None of us were talking, really. So we just had to get that confidence back, get back on the sticks. At the end of the season, we were hitting pretty good, but we needed to get back on that in sectionals. So I’m very confident in our team winning this.”