Jackson Babe Ruth suffers first home loss in doubleheader with New Madrid

~ Jackson dropped Monday's opener, but salvaged a split.

The Jackson Senior Babe Ruth baseball team suffered its first home defeat this season, a 9-3 loss to New Madrid in the first game of Monday's doubleheader.

"We played an extremely poor game," Jackson coach Paul Sander said. "We probably played as bad a game as we have played all year."

Jackson did bounce back for a split with a 4-1 victory in the nightcap.

In the opener, New Madrid (15-4), which had dropped a doubleheader to Jackson last week, struck in the top of the second inning when Josh Boese hit an RBI double to score Cody Cook, and the visiting squad had the lead for good.

New Madrid added two runs off losing pitcher Bryant Steffens in the third for a 3-0 lead.

Jackson (17-3) trimmed the lead to 3-2 in the third, but New Madrid answered with two more runs in the fifth inning to lead 5-2.

New Madrid center fielder Kyle Harris ended any suspense in the seventh inning with a grand slam to left field for a 9-3 advantage.

"I had already struck out twice," Harris said. "I wasn't going to strike out again. The guys in the dugout said if [D.J. Birdwell] gets on base you better get a grand slam."

Birdwell drew the second straight pass from Jackson pitcher B.I. Howard to load the bases.

Harris, the youngest player on the field at 15, is the younger brother of former New Madrid County Central all-state third baseman Dylan Harris.

"He can play anywhere on the field," New Madrid coach Kevin Lyons said. "He has probably been the hottest hitter for us in the last five or six ball games. He's going to be a really good one to come."

Jackson, typically a solid team defensively, committed four errors in the first game.

"Our defensive was terrible and our hitting was untimely," Sander said. "Overall we had a very poor effort."

New Madrid made its opponent pay for the fielding mistakes, scoring three runs directly off throwing errors.

Offensively, Jackson stranded six base runners.

Ryan Bass had three of Jackson's nine hits, while Garrett Fritsche had two hits.

"We had just about the same amount of hits as they did, but we weren't able to string them together," Sander said.

In last week's meeting, Jackson took both games in convincing fashion, winning 9-3 and 15-6.

"They pretty well routed us," Lyons said.

Lyons said it was important to start off strong in the first game.

"We realize that we can play with them now, and that's the big part," Lyons said. "Just get over the hump and realize we can play."

Jackson won the second game behind the pitching of Austin Mueller and Chris Roth and error-free defense.

Mueller gave up just one run over the first 5 1/3 innings to collect the win, while Roth allowed one hit over the final 1 2/3 innings for the save.

Roth and Fritsche each had two hits for Jackson, which had nine hits overall.

"In neither game did we hit very well, but we played much sounder defense the second game and that allowed us to get an important split in league play," Sander said.