Lawson Berg's 'Maddux' keeps Duluth Marshall at bay in Bemidji victory
· Yahoo Sports
May 18—BEMIDJI — By the sixth inning of the Bemidji High School baseball team's game against Duluth Marshall, Lawson Berg was pitching lights-out.
To that point, he had given up three hits and hadn't let a Hilltopper past second base.
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But Duluth Marshall's arms were keeping BHS batters at bay. After giving up two runs in the first inning, Mason Park and Evan Lammi held Bemidji without a run to keep the game within reach.
With the Jacks ahead 2-0 in the bottom of the sixth, Berg needed a better cushion for his final inning on the mound. Who better to do that than himself?
After Gunner Ganske hit a leadoff triple, Berg hit a line drive that hugged the first base line to score Ganske, an RBI double to extend the BHS lead to 3-0.
The Jacks weren't done, either. Heaton Brodina hit a towering two-run home run to right field to truly give Bemidji the cushion it needed, leading 5-0 by inning's end.
Berg was sent back to the mound in the seventh inning to finish off the Hilltoppers. After giving up a leadoff single, he produced a double play and a fly out to close the Lumberjacks' 5-0 victory Monday evening at the BSU ballfield.
Berg gave up only four hits, one walk and struck out four in seven innings pitched.
Oh, and he was 3-for-3 with an RBI at the plate.
"Just a fabulous job by Lawson Berg," head coach Jim Grimm said. "He was bordering on a Maddux game. He barely threw 12 pitches an inning, that's really good."
A Maddux — a statistic named after Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux — is when a player pitches a complete game shutout in fewer than 100 pitches. Berg threw just 83 pitches against Duluth Marshall.
His shutout was most in jeopardy in the fifth inning. The Hilltoppers had two men on with nobody out, the most action they had on the basepaths on Monday. Knowing the tying run was on first, Berg struck out Junior Lucero and turned a double play after Mason Park tried to bunt to get out of the inning unscathed.
Park's bunt was popped to Berg on the mound, but communication with his teammates helped him turn two.
"Gunner (Ganske) was yelling 'Two,' so I just ripped it over to second base, got the out and got out of the inning," Berg explained. "And that was kind of a momentum changer because we scored three in the bottom of the sixth, too."
It was one of two double plays the Bemidji defense turned on Duluth Marshall. It's satisfying for Grimm to see improvement on defense, especially seeing the skill and chemistry come together this late in the season.
"It's been a long time coming," he said. "Every practice, I can't even tell you how many double plays we do. One after another. Because you can include so many things in that. You know, you're getting ground balls, you're throwing, you're doing all that. We're getting more settled on who's defending up the middle."
Bemidji took advantage of Hilltoppers' mistakes in the first inning. With Reece Dokken attempting to steal second and Miles Gish watching closely at third base, catcher Lucero threw over the head of second baseman Easton Grumdahl for Gish to score. James Garrison drove home Dokken on a groundout to make it 2-0 Jacks.
They held onto that lead until the three-run sixth inning, highlighted by Brodina's two-run blast.
"That's his first (home run), first of many to come, hopefully," Berg said. "We all know he can do it; it was just a matter of time before he got one."
"Heaton's hit some balls really hard," Grimm added. "Hasn't had some luck once in a while, but he got a hold of that one."
The Lumberjacks (8-7) head into Tuesday with their biggest doubleheader of the season: a Section 8-4A matchup against Brainerd that could have playoff implications if one team sweeps the other. Bemidji is 4-4 against section foes this season, and is
sixth out of eight teams in the section
as of May 18. Brainerd is in last place with a 0-6 section record.
In a Section 8-4A doubleheader last Friday, BHS lost to Elk River, 4-2, but defeated first-place St. Michael-Albertville 8-6, the Knights' only section loss this season.
Little separates the teams in Section 8-4A, so a high seed and a home game are more than available for BHS.
"I think the section's up for grabs," Grimm said. "I don't see anybody taking control of it. No one's running away with it, and nobody's out of it either. I think it's going to be a battle royale when the section comes around."
Bemidji 5, Duluth Marshall 0
DM 000 000 0 — 0-4-2
BHS 200 003 X — 5-9-2
WP: Berg (7 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K)
LP: Park (4 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 K)