Running away with it

Things got out of hand early when the Snowhawks piled on runs in their latest snowshoe baseball victory.

The Snowhawks defeated Wickman Construction 34-11 Monday night in Lake Tomahawk. A week after scoring just 13 runs, the Snowhawks tallied a season-high.

“I’ll tell you, our bats were hot,” player-manager Jeff Smith said. “I’ve never seen so many line drives. I hope we can carry that through into the next few games. It was a good night all around.”

Three inside-the-park home runs gave the Snowhawks a big boost right out of the gate. Smith hit a leadoff homer on a line drive that got past all the outfielders.

“It’s been a while,” Smith said about his home run. “I don’t usually swing for the fences. When the ball went through, I thought, ‘Oh boy, it’s gonna keep rolling and rolling,’ and it was nice to see a shot go through once in a while. I had a rough week last week so it was nice to come back.”

Next, Derek Young homered down the left field line for back-to-back runs. Jesse Robinson made it three home runs in four batters with a shot to right-center field. 

“That really did set the tone,” Smith said. “I think it was the way they were positioned out there. Line drives just went right through everybody, and I know they’re not real fast on ‘shoes, and so I think we had an advantage there. Their outfield was scattered pretty far apart. We were lucky enough to get a couple that went right through.”

The Snowhawks led 5-0 after one inning.

Wickman Construction looked like it was going to make a game out of it with four runs in the top of the second.

Ryan Kolton delivered an RBI triple for Wickman Construction’s first run. Later, John Buglass hit a two-run single to center. Chad Johnson followed that up with an RBI single to make it 5-4.

“That’s about the closest it got,” Smith said. “We thought they were gonna keep hitting like that. I thought, ‘Well, this is gonna be really good because they’ll keep it close on their end, and then we’ll have fun on our end,’ but it just didn’t happen that way.”

Players from Wickman Construction did all they could to make it to a base or get an out. The scoreboard wasn’t going their way, but it didn’t stop their effort and hustle.

“It’s just that they made some bad decisions — overrunning bases and things like that,” Smith said. “All in all, I thought they had guys that could hit the ball, but once it got past the middle of the game, they hit a lot shots kind of right to us.”

The Snowhawks scored the maximum five runs in each of the first five innings. They recorded hit after hit after hit. Smith batted in six of the first seven innings of the game.

Looking to keep the game fun and exciting, the Snowhawks mixed up their positions on the field.

“We try to switch the positions up to see what positions people haven’t played before,” Smith said. “Some guys like to bat opposite-handed. It’s hard to do. We wanna keep it fun, and some balls we kind of let get through. If they’re hard shots, we let them drop just so they can have some fun too. It looked like they were having a ball over there the way they were jumping around.”

Five runs by Wickman Construction gave them something to cheer about in the fifth inning. Johnson and Lucas Cardona both had run-scoring hits. Brandon Craig and Megan Buglass both scored in the inning.

“They were very aggressive, I got to say that, on the base and off the base paths,” Smith said. “They had a lot of dives, and they weren’t afraid to eat a little dust last night. It was just a little bit of inexperience, and if they played this game for a while, I think they would get pretty, pretty good at it cause it didn’t seem like they were bad at running.”

Other home runs from the Snowhawks came from Robinson and Young. They both totaled two home runs each.

Gunner Dunbar’s home run in the fifth inning was the only homer to clear the park. He blasted one over the right field fence. Even though it was a grand slam, only one run counted due to the five-run rule.

“Chad had a lot of fun,” Smith said. “He threw a lot of balls that were right over the plate. I mean there were some pitches that were off, but the ones that did land were right, square in the middle so they were quite easy to hit.”

Smith, Young and Dunbar tied a game high with five runs scored each.

“If I look back in the books, I think we must’ve had over 40 hits so that’s a really, really good night,” Smith said.

Near the end of the game, both teams showed off their theatrical side with behind-the-back throws, triple plays and run-down situations.

“We try to make it fun,” Smith said. “We throw the ball around a little bit and some try to hit high flies to the guys or grounders, but sometimes they get through, and it’s tough to get an out sometimes. You just kind of hope that they can hit and then come back and keep it close on their part.”

Up next, the Snowhawks (5-2) are due to play Fricken Restaurants in the inaugural matchup on Monday, Aug. 11 in Lake Tomahawk. First pitch is at 7:30 p.m.

Last year, the Snowhawks’ game against Fricken Restaurants didn’t get played out.

“It is a new team. We have never played them before,” Smith said. “We substituted a game of theirs (last year). They offered to substitute their game for Jesse’s team, Dazzle’s Demons. There was a rainout in-between there, but we didn’t want to have their game rained out, and Bill (Fricke) was nice enough to sacrifice their team for his team to play, and this time they get to play. We don’t know what they’re gonna have. I’m not really sure. He says he’s got a full team so we’ll see. It’ll be a surprise. We’re kind of expecting a good game because, I mean, he knows a lot of people so we’ll see what happens.”

Brett LaBore may be reached at [email protected] or [email protected]