Gold suffers first loss at hands of Rochester

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- There is a reason that Rochester Lourdes won the Class 2A title this spring in baseball.

Saturday afternoon, New Ulm Gold found that reason.

Lefthander Ted Garry allowed only one hit -- that a lead-off home run by Dusty Fleck in the second -- as Rochester handed Gold their first loss of the season and of the Upper Midwest Classic with 9-1 pounding.

Garry struck out seven and walked four - the only New Ulm runners to reach base besides Fleck - in getting the A's first win of the Classic against two losses.

Jacob Mertz took the loss for New Ulm (15-1) allowing seven hits and four runs - four of which came in a nine-run Rochester fifth inning. Dusty Farasyn was tagged with the final five runs in relief.

Justin Grant led Rochester with a 3-for-4 plate performance. Dan Smith and Jesse Anderson each had two hits with Chris Collins driving in three runs with a bases-loaded double in that nine-run fifth inning.

"It doesn't matter how many runs we gave up, we only had one hit. If you only score one run, you are not going to win many games," said Gold coach Dave Kunz."He did a nice job against us."

But Kunz was just as critical of his own team's efforts on the field against Rochester.

"We seemed to have a lack of energy all game."

New Ulm would get to the southpaw for their only hit and only run when the righthanded hitting Fleck sliced an opposite field home run to rightfield on an 1-0 Garry offering.

Other than that. New Ulm bats were silent.

Meanwhile,. Rochester had big threats in the second and fourth innings but Mertz managed to work his way out of them.

In the second, Dan Smith led off with a single and Justin Grant followed with the first of his three hits, singling to left. After Lee Anderson popped out, Mertz plunked Jesse Anderson on an 0-1 pitch to load the bases with one out. But Mertz retired Nate Bower and Dan Lyons to end the threat.

The A;s mounted their second scoring threat in the fourth inning. A one out Grant single and a two out base hit by Jesse Anderson put runners on first and second. However, Mertz again ended the threat by getting Bower to fly out to center.

But in the fifth, Rochester would send 13 men to the plate and score nine runs.

Dan Lyons singled and swiped second. He scampered to third on a Chris Collins' fly out before Ted Garry walked.Jay Kasner drove a 1-2 Mertz pitch to center to tie the game at 1-1.

Dan Smith's triple to deep center plated both pinchrunner Pete Zblewski and Kasner for a 3-1 A's lead.

That ended Mertz' day with Dusty Farasyn taking over. The righthander was greeted by a a Grant RBI double and a Lee Anderson single opened the flood gates for a 5-1lead.

A walk to Jesse Anderson a free pass to Bower loaded the bases. Collins' two-out double to center upped the lead to 8-1 and Garry's two-bagger made it 9-1.

"You want to avoid big innings," commented Kunz. "They got some balls in the gap - a lot of balls hit over our heads and it snowballed from there. We don't often give up nine runs in one inning. I told the kids that no team is going to win every game - you are going to lose here and there and how we play in the next couple of games after that determines what kind of team you have."

NEW ULM GOLD 010-000-0=1-1-0

ROCHESTER 000-090-X=9-12-1

WP; Garry. LP:Mertz. 2B:Garry (R), Collins (R). 3B: Smith (R). HR: Fleck (NU).