JEFF CITY CAPTURES TOURNEY

Jefferson City proved to be by far the dominant baseball team in the first Capaha Classic American Legion Tournament that concluded Sunday in Cape Girardeau.

And Jefferson City's Josh Reynolds proved to be the eight-team tourney's dominant pitcher.

Reynolds went all nine innings and struck out 15 Sunday as Jefferson City won the tournament championship with an 11-2 rout of Ballwin at Capaha Field.

Jefferson City and Ballwin had each won all three of their games in their respective pools to advance to the final. Jefferson City's other tourney victories came by scores of 11-1, 9-1 and 10-5.

Also Sunday at Capaha Field, Paducah, Ky., claimed third place with a 9-7 win over host Cape Girardeau Ford & Sons, which wound up fourth.

Two other scheduled Sunday games, which were supposed to be played at Central High School, were canceled because of all the rain that fell late Saturday night and early Sunday morning.

Wiped out were the fifth-place game between Chaffee and Washington and the seventh-place contest between Festus and Rogersville.

"Even with the rain, we wound up having a good tournament," said Cape Ford & Sons manager Ron Michel. "I'm pleased with the way things went for the first year and hopefully this will be an annual event."

Capaha has a tarpaulin to cover much of the field while Central does not. Thus the reason the games were able to be played at Capaha and not Central.

Reynolds took advantage of the situation to mow down Ballwin's batters. The hard-throwing righthander took a three-hit shutout into the bottom of the ninth inning before Ballwin touched him for three hits and two runs.

Reynolds had all 15 of his strikeouts through eight innings. He walked one.

As a first-year player this spring at Central Missouri State, Reynolds went 9-0 and helped lead the Mules to the NCAA Division II World Series.

"He's a very good pitcher," said Jefferson City coach Mike Reed. "With him on the mound, we've got a pretty good ballclub."

Jefferson City had a strong team no matter who was pitching in the tournament, as evidenced by its four fairly routine victories.

Travis Holtmeyer led Sunday's 13-hit attack with four hits, including a monster two-run homer over the scoreboard beyond the left-field fence.

Ballwin helped out by committing a whopping nine errors that led to six unearned runs.

Taylor Twellman, one of the nation's top high school soccer players who will play both soccer and baseball at the University of Maryland, had two of Ballwin's six hits.

Jeff Cleve took the loss. In 5 1/3 innings, he allowed eight hits and four earned runs.

In Sunday's third-place game, Paducah built an early 9-2 lead before a late Cape rally fell short.

Cape had just five hits -- two by Justin McAlister -- but took advantage of numerous walks.

Paducah banged out 13 hits. Aaron Edwards had three hits and three RBIs.

Travis Klipfel allowed five runs and did not get out of the first inning to take the loss. Kyle Perry was the winner.