Ben Larson (Photo by Noah Clooten)
DEVILS LAKE — On Friday, Parker Brodina fell one out short of a no-hitter in an otherwise spotless performance.
Ben Larson reached that same point in Saturday’s game. With two outs in the seventh, Wahpeton having not recorded a base knock, Larson induced a soft ground ball towards third base. Will Heilman charged in but couldn’t get a glove on it.
“That made my heart stop,” Larson said.
It was ruled an error to keep Larson’s no-no alive. But he still needed that vaunted final out.
Larson, who’d been the epitome of accuracy and efficiency all afternoon, threw two balls to Wahepton cleanup hitter Rylan Flack. He had to pitch from behind.
Flack swung and bounced one softly past the mound. Larson reached out and nicked it with his glove, but he couldn’t get a handle on it. Second baseman Max Palmer, though, was right behind him, and he calmly flung it to first to get the final out by a step.
Larson could exhale. He had his no-hitter, with the only two baserunners coming on errors. He threw just 66 pitches, striking out six and not issuing any walks in a 9-0 blowout of Wahpeton.
“It felt really good after a rocky start against Davies,” said Larson, who allowed four runs in four innings his previous time out. “It just felt good to go out there and pitch strikes and have my team behind me.”
The Firebirds (5-4, 4-4) evened up their EDC record with a two-point win over the Huskies (2-7, 2-8) at DLYA Field. It followed Friday’s doubleheader split with Shanley, where Devils Lake dropped the nightcap 3-2.
“Last night didn’t end the way we wanted it to,” Firebirds head coach Brent Luehring said. “But there’s nothing better than being able to fix our mistakes from last night and play ready again the next day… Good feeling.”
Larson was in command right from the beginning. He struck out one in a perfect first inning. The only baserunner he allowed through the first six innings was a leadoff error in the second, but it was erased on a 1-4-3 double play to end the frame.
“Good control,” Luehring said. “He’s never gonna overpower anybody, but if he can locate his curveball, we can go curveball-fastball about every other pitch, or whatever we’ve gotta do, back-to-back. And it makes them challenging to square up. So yeah, he just dictated. And you could tell he wanted the ball today after last night, a senior trying to set us on the right foot. And he did.”
The Firebirds scrapped together two runs in the bottom of the third to take the lead. Larson led off with a single, then moved to second on Taydon Triepke’s sacrifice bunt. Max Palmer legged out an infield single, and Larson came around to score after the shortstop made an errant throw on the play.
Palmer scored all the way from second on Fausten Olson’s groundout to make it 2-0.
Larson threw a 1-2-3 fourth, ending the frame with his third strikeout. The Firebirds’ offense went right back to it in the bottom half as Trason Beck singled and Brodina hit an infield single. Hunter Remmick added another hit to load the bases with nobody out.
Larson helped his own cause with a sacrifice fly. Brodina then scored on a 4-6 fielder’s choice where the shortstop threw it away despite having no chance at a double play. Max Palmer stole second to put two in scoring position, and Olson came through with a two-run single to break it open.
Heilman added an RBI single, and it was 7-0 after a five-run inning.
Larson was unfazed by the long wait between innings. He struck out two in a 1-2-3 fifth. His pitch count was at just 42 while facing the minimum in five no-hit innings.
“Just knowing that I have my team behind me, with me, helping me out through the whole thing,” Larson said. “I’m confident in them making plays behind me. All I need to do is just hit my spots, and they just need to make their plays.”
Devils Lake scored another in the bottom of the fifth on back-to-back errors by the Wahpeton shortstop, who’d already made two errors in the previous inning. Flack, the Huskies’ starting pitcher, was pulled after allowing a single to Triepke, having thrown 4 1/3 innings.
Max Palmer drew a walk against the new pitcher, Dylan Vierstraete, and Olson added another on an RBI fielder’s choice to make it 9-0 after five complete innings.
Larson dropped in a curve to lead off the sixth inning with a strikeout — giving him four punchouts in the last five batters and six overall. Max Palmer caught a soft lineout to end another perfect inning for Larson, his pitch count still at just 54.
“I got to the sixth and the seventh inning, and people were kind of looking at me in ways,” Larson said. “They weren’t trying to jinx it, but I was just trying to focus on playing the game the whole time.”
The final frame was the closest to what one could describe as a “high-stress” inning. Larson had to contend with a couple of deceptively soft ground balls, one of which was hit past Heilman for an error. But he got the job done.
By Larson’s own recollection, this was his third no-hitter. The other two were in JV and 15U, so this was his first at the varsity level.
He said he stashed the game ball in his bag and is planning on keeping it.
With the big win out of the way, Devils Lake played a non-counter to wrap up the day. Wahpeton was short on arms, and the conditions were increasingly rainy and windy, so the teams agreed to only play three innings. The Firebirds won 9-3.
Right-hander Cayden McCarthy bounced back from a rough outing his last time out, throwing a perfect first inning with two strikeouts.
Devils Lake put up an eight-spot in the bottom of the first on five hits and three errors. Thirteen Firebirds batted in the inning.
They scored one more in the second on two walks and two hit batters, but stranded the bases loaded.
McCarthy grinded through his final two innings, issuing three walks and a hit by pitch. He limited the Huskies to three runs while collecting five total strikeouts. A single in the second inning against McCarthy was Wahpeton’s first hit of the entire day.
“His last outing he would definitely like to forget about down in West Fargo,” Luehring said of McCarthy. “So yeah, I told him, ‘You’ve just gotta give us 60 pitches today.’… He’s gonna be a big part of what we do, and it’s nice to see him turn the page and have a good outing for us and get a win.”
Devils Lake, which entered the weekend on a three-game losing streak, has now won three of its last four heading into the thick of conference play.
“This will help us a lot, especially winning both games,” Larson said. “I think our confidence will skyrocket from here.”
The Firebirds travel to Grand Forks to face Red River (8-3, 6-2) on Tuesday at 5 p.m.
