RICHMOND — Who knew it was this hard for two teams to complete a baseball game?
    Five nights after beginning a game in Chillicothe, but being unable to get even one out recorded before being rained out, the Chillicothe Mudcats and Mac-N-Seitz Athletics played a flawed nine full innings last night and still are no closer to deciding a winner in their first-ever meeting.
    Even playing the game at a site 30 or 40 miles east of the originally-planned locale and therefore gaining extra time ahead of yet another thunderstorm, all the Mudcats and Athletics could manage was a 4-4 tie and a suspended game to be completed (maybe) the next time the Mudcats visit the newest MINK League member. That’s due to be next Tuesday.

    Before then, Chillicothe will try to play a completed game for the first time since last Saturday by hosting the Topeka (Kan.) Golden Giants in a league contest tonight at 7:05 at “June” Shaffer Memorial Park. Blake Barber (1-0) is penciled in to start on the hill for the Mudcats.
That is scheduled to be followed by Saturday and Sunday MINK League road games against the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Grays at Kearney High School and Clarinda (Iowa) A’s, respectively. Saturday’s contest with FCA, with Aaron Dunn (0-1) slated to make the start, is due to begin at 4 p.m. with Monday’s action in Iowa at 7 p.m.

    Last night at Richmond’s Southview Park field, both teams undoubtedly trundled back home in the rain kicking themselves for failing to securely grasp gift-wrapped opportunities at victory.
    “It wasn’t the best-played game by either team,” concurred Chillicothe head coach “Jud” Kindle.
    After doing little offensively through five innings, Chillicothe erupted for four hits and four sixth-inning runs against the metropolitan Kansas City baseball academy’s starting pitcher, Ben Morgan.
    The Fish nursed a 4-0 lead into the eighth inning, only to hand half of it away via two walks, a hit batsman, a sacrifice fly, and a 2-out RBI single. Only a costly baserunning blunder prevented the Athletics from making further inroads and perhaps tying the game then.
    In the bottom of the ninth, Mac-N-Seitz once more was presented a golden opportunity to do big damage, loading the bases with no outs. However after a tough-luck fielding error on the Mudcats’ fifth pitcher of the night, Corey Theriot, who slipped on the rain-dampened grass as he tried to field a tap between the plate and mound, made it 4-3.
    However, with the bags still juiced and no outs, the Athletics couldn’t finish Chillicothe off.
    Riley Reynolds’ sacrifice fly to deep left-center field brought home the tying run, but, as he tagged and advanced to third, baserunner Colin Murphy failed to score when Matty Johnson’s throw there got away. The errant throw – Chillicothe’s third error of the inning following an off-target throw by newly-arrived third baseman Andy Cotton as he tried for a forceout at second base and Theriot’s fumble of Matt Morgan’s tap – did allow Morgan to move up to second.
    With only one out and no double play in order, Kindle took a calculated gamble and intentionally walked the next batter to set up a force play at any base, even though it meant bringing No. 3 hitter Eric Cole to the plate. Cole was one for two with three walks on the night up to then.
    With nowhere to put Cole and a myriad of ways in which Mac-N-Seitz could pull out the win,  Theriot wanted a double-play grounder the most, but gladly would have taken for a popup, shallow fly, a ground ball on which a force at the plate could be recorded, or a strikeout.
    The sidearming righthander from Northeast Texas Community College and the geographically-confusing Iowa, La., got the No. 1 answer on the survey. Cole slashed a low liner up the middle that second baseman TS Reed backhanded on the short hop to his right. He quickly stepped on second and threw to first for an inning-ending and game-extending twin-killing.
    When the rain from the storm system which had crept through the Kansas City area increased in intensity before the 10th inning could begin, play was through for the night and neither side will have an advantage when it resumes.

    The missed ninth-inning chance was only the most-recent failure of clutch hitting in the game by the Athletics.
    The two runners Cole’s double play stranded hiked to a whopping 17 the number Mac-N-Seitz batters had stranded in the contest. It left the sacks full in the first and fifth without scoring and two ducks were left on the pond in the third, fourth, sixth, eighth, and ninth.
    The majority of those baserunners were the result of Chillicothe pitchers’ difficulty in throwing strikes.
    Starter Aaron Meade allowed only one hit in four innings’ work, but he walked six and hit another. Aaron Kleekamp, who was in line for the winning decision until the ninth inning, gave out three walks and hit one in two innings. Even Ryan Carbah, who threw a fairly-uneventful seventh, couldn’t get through it without issuing a free pass.
    Through all that, however, Mac-N-Seitz still hadn’t scored, but that changed when Eric Darkow took over to start the eighth inning. He faced three batters, sandwiching a third Athletics hit batsman between two walks, before Kindle and pitching coach Jason Nold sent out a distress call for Theriot.
    Theriot and the Mudcats caught a break when Mike Garza’s bases-loaded fly to deep right field turned into a double play when Luke Schlechte gunned down Riley Reynolds’ ill-advisedly trying to tag and advance to second after the catch.
Now on the scoreboard, Mac-N-Seitz pulled within 4-2 on Preston Land’s basehit, but Theriot managed to temporarily stop the Athletics there.
    However, up by two, the Chillicothe closer gave a base on balls to the leadoff hitter in the ninth to immediately bring the potential tying run to the plate. Jeff Lusardi then singled to right to put the potential winning run in the batter’s box.
    Theriot then did what he could to put out the fire he’d started, inducing a bouncer to Cotton that might have become a rally-squelching double play. However, an off-line throw was ruled to have pulled second baseman TS Reed off the bag at second and the bases were jammed.

    The Mudcats compacted all of their offensive output into a five-batter stretch in the top of the sixth inning.
    Having retired the last nine batters he’d faced, Martin unwisely took a page from Chillicothe’s pitching book for the night and walked leadoff batter Aaron Conway. The pass came after Conway was not allowed to take first base after being hit by a pitch, the home plate umpire ruling he hadn’t tried to avoid the inside pitch. Reaching anyway on the base on balls, Conway stole second base and moved to third as Reed tapped out to the right side.
    With the game’s potential first run at third base with one out, Chillicothe’s leading run produced so far in 2008, Bubby Williams, once more delivered. He powered a double over the head of left fielder Jordan Owen and the Mudcats led. It was Williams’ seventh run batted in of the year and the sixth game out of seven the club has played that he’s driven a run home.
    Cleanup hitter Dominic D’Anna, who could have become the first Mudcat ever to homer in three-straight games, instead drove in a run for the third-straight game with a single up the middle which plated Williams and designated hitter Tyler Knight snapped a 0-for-9 streak by launching a towering drive over the fence in left field for his first home run.
    “He’s been hitting the ball hard, but right at people,” Kindle noted about the Lawrence, Kan., player. “He’d hit the ball on the nose the time before and it was caught in center.”
    Knight’s two-run blast made it 4-0 and made it three-straight games in which the Mudcats have homered. That hadn’t happened since the last three games the 2005 Fish played in the NBC Central USA Regional tournament.

    When play was halted prior to the start of extra innings, Chillicothe had collected four runs on eight hits. Mac-N-Seitz, managed by former Kansas City Royals infielder Kevin Seitzer, had four. For the Mudcats, only Kyle Zimmerman had a multi-hit game going with a double and single.
“He seems to always be in the right place at the right time,” Kindle said of Zimmerman.

    NOTES:  When the game is re-started, presumably at the Athletics’ normal “home” field at Blue Springs South High School, rather than Richmond, Chillicothe will be operating without a designated hitter and without Williams. On Reynolds’ ninth-inning sacrifice fly, Johnson came up injured after making the throw to third base. With only catcher Cole Mazurek still on his bench as a position player – Tyler Ryun was not at the game because of illness and Dallas Hord had subbed for Williams at catcher to begin the bottom of the ninth, Kindle put DH Knight in in right field, shifting Schlechte to left and Conway from left to center. When the game resumes, Theriot technically will be in the No. 9 spot in the lineup. Leadoff man Conway will be up first in the 10th, followed by TS Reed and Hord.