Amid Friday’s rainfall, the International Falls baseball lost for the first time this season when the Broncos were officially shut out at home by Mesabi East, 7-0, after five innings.
Unofficially, the Falls scored four runs in the sixth inning, when the Giants added two more runs in the bottom of the frame, before rain halted the game and none of those runs counted.
The Broncos batted first because the game had been scheduled as a home contest for Mesabi East, which didn’t have its field ready to play on and the site was changed to the Falls.
The Broncos had only two hits off Mesabi East pitcher Ben Suslavich, who also accounted for three of the Giants’ nine hits off of Falls pitchers Jack Bartkowski and Max Vergeldt.
“One thing that we did extremely poorly against those guys is we ran the bases very bad, and that’s typically not Bronco baseball,” said Falls head coach Eric Walls, who noted the team ran the bases better in Monday’s 14-7 home victory over Mountain Iron-Buhl.
The Broncos’ Jakob Eide started on the mound against MI-B and went 4 1/3 innings in recording the win. Vergeldt closed out the final 2 2/3 innings. Hunter Hill took the pitching loss for MI-B.
The Falls led by eight runs before the Rangers cut the deficit to 8-5 in the top of the fifth, which included a three-run homer by MI-B’s Billy Gellerstedt.
Kevin Kilbride tallied three hits, while Jackson Vollom added a pair of hits for the Broncos.
Both teams ended up with 12 hits apiece.
