DEVILS LAKE — It was a rainy, gloomy, windy evening at DLYA Legion Field. At the start of Monday’s game, it was tough to even stand outside, let alone play baseball.
But that’s exactly what Devils Lake (6-4) and Fargo North (1-1) had to do.
Both squads played sloppy defense, combining for eight errors on the day. But Parker Brodina, in his return from an AAU basketball tournament, hung in on the mound after a wobbly start. He ended up throwing a complete game on 115 pitches. The Firebirds trailed for most of the middle innings, but a series of bunts in the sixth gave them a 4-3 lead that Brodina didn’t relinquish.
It earned the Firebirds their fourth straight win. Brodina called it redemption, beating the team that ended their season last year.
“We haven’t beaten those guys in the regular season in a couple of years,” head coach Brent Luehring said. “So I’m pretty tickled.”
With the rain pouring down, Brodina walked the first two batters he faced. The outing could have spiraled on him quickly. But he struck out the next three, working through long at-bats and using his fastball-curveball mix to get swings and misses.
“Calm down. Just throw strikes,” Brodina said. “Nothing else I can really do. The rain was messing me up a bit, but I had to battle through.”
The Spartans took a 1-0 lead the next inning anyway. They scratched out a run on a throwing error by catcher Trason Beck — after shortstop Mason Palmer committed a leadoff error and Fargo North stole two bases.
Devils Lake couldn’t take advantage of a scoring chance in the first inning. With two outs, Palmer collected a single, and Jackson Baeth worked an impressive walk. But Brodina struck out on a questionable call on the inside corner, with the count at 3-2.
The Firebirds stormed back to tie it, though, thanks to some sloppy fielding from Fargo North in the second inning. In the span of three batters, the Spartans made four errors — three by pitcher Brady Manly. Ben Larson scored on an errant throw by Manly after Taydon Triepke laid down a nice bunt. Manly also made a wild pickoff throw and threw away another comebacker amidst the sequence.
An overaggressive baserunning mistake by Triepke helped the Spartans out. Manly walked and hit a batter to load the bases, and his outing came to an end after 1 1/3 innings. But right-hander Jonah DeJong got out of the jam with a strikeout of Fausten Olson and a flyout from Palmer.
After an adventurous inning where the Firebirds didn’t get a hit but had five baserunners, it was a 1-1 game.
Each pitcher recorded a clean third inning. But the Spartans retook the lead in the fourth, after back-to-back singles and a misplay in the outfield. Another run came in on a wild pitch, and Fargo North led 3-1.
In the bottom of the fifth, Olson reached on Fargo North’s fifth error, this time on a line drive to the first baseman. Palmer smacked a well-struck single, giving him five hits in his last seven at-bats. It put runners on the corners with one out.
“He is one of the most talented kids we’ve got in this town,” Luehring said of Palmer. “He’s good at everything he does. If he keeps working hard, the sky’s the limit for him.”
The Firebirds settled for one in the fifth, as Baeth hit a sacrifice fly to center.
But after chipping into the deficit, they played scrappy baseball in the sixth to claw back and take the lead. Larson reached on an infield hit, and Beck followed with a single. Triepke hit a sacrifice bunt to move the runners over, and a perfect squeeze bunt by Max Palmer tied the game. Beau Brodina followed with another bunt that only rolled a matter of inches, but got down for a base hit to give Devils Lake a 4-3 lead.
“I know it’s against analytics in baseball today, but I’m a big bunt guy, if you can’t tell,” Luehring said. “And I believe that if you can force the issue, make them throw it around, especially in tough conditions… We work on it a lot. And the kids buy in.”
With Brodina already around 100 pitches, Luehring said he was planning to bring in somebody else for the seventh. But Brodina told him that he was going back out there. So Luehring let him.
“Don’t bet against him,” Luehring said. “I’ll put it that way.”
Brodina pitched arguably his best inning in the final frame, despite his pitch count being in the triple digits. He struck out the first two, then ended the game on a groundout to short. The team, which had grown relatively quiet during the sluggish middle innings, erupted with cheers and roars.
Not everything went perfectly. The conditions were brutal. But they found a way to get it done.
“Just happy for them. That’s the big thing,” Luehring said. “They knew they were close. And I was on them in the dugout, like, ‘Can’t waste your opportunities against a good team,’ and they finally came through.”
Brodina wound up with nine strikeouts in his seven innings of work. He allowed three runs (two earned) on three hits and four walks. He has a 3.46 ERA through his first two starts of the season.
“The curveball started off a little bit slow,” he said. “And then I started to mix it in a little bit more, and it became a big factor at the end.”
Devils Lake looks to keep its four-game winning streak rolling against Grand Forks Central at Apollo Field on Thursday at 5 p.m.
