ND title train crashes in sixth

SPRINGFIELD -- St. Dominic cleanup hitter Will Mulligan smashed a two-run home run to left field to help his Crusaders team tie Notre Dame 8-8 in the top of the sixth inning of Friday's Class 3 state semifinal game.

Mulligan returned to the plate 18 batters later in that same inning and hit his second two-run homer in his third at-bat of the frame. It was a much more meaningless blast, giving his team a 25-8 lead and capping off a 19-run inning.

St. Dominic broke the state tournament record for most runs in an inning with 19. The previous high was 13. The Crusaders sent 23 men to the plate in the sixth inning, with five batters getting three at-bats each. The rally also included 10 hits and two Notre Dame errors.

The Crusaders cruised to a 25-8 six-inning victory at Meador Park.

"It's real disheartening to see a 19 up there in the scoreboard in one inning," Notre Dame starting pitcher Mark Himmelberg said. "The only positive you can take out of it is we might have set history for the most runs given up in an inning at the state tournament.

"They hit everything, and that's not an exaggeration. They hit everything and they hit everything hard. You've got to give them credit."

St. Dominic (25-3), which also set a record for runs in a state tournament game (the previous record was 20), advanced to today's Class 3 title game against Webb City. Notre Dame (19-7) will play in today's third-place game against Boonville.

KIT DOYLE ~ kdoyle@semissourian.com Notre Dame's Blake Gaddis scored around St. Dominic catcher Joe West during Friday's Class 3 semifinal at Meador Park in Springfield. St. Dominic won 25-8.

"When their offense took off, it was just unstoppable," Notre Dame coach Jeff Graviett said. "In my 14 years of coaching, that's the most I've seen scored on me in an inning."

Mulligan had hit just two home runs the entire spring entering the semifinal. He said his motivation to hit two more was to atone for committing a fourth-inning error. He added that the Crusaders didn't know much about Colton Young or the other Notre Dame pitchers, but had confidence in their ability to hit any hurler they faced.

"We talked to the Francis Howell coach about them, but we didn't get too much inside scoop," Mulligan said. "We faced two of the best pitchers in our class with [Charlie] Lowell and [Jacob] Turner, and we knew if we could get to them, we could get to anybody. We're just a solid all-around team. We knew we could get the job done."

Leadoff hitter Alex Larkin, who went 4-for-5 with seven RBIs, said no one on the Crusaders wanted to make the final out in the sixth.

Bulldogs shortstop Colton Young tagged out baserunner Brett Wilke during Friday's game.

"We knew we could hit them," Larkin said. "We just had to come out and put it on them. Hitting is contagious. ... There are no words to describe that inning. It was just unbelievable. I guess no one wanted to be that last out. Everyone just wanted to keep hitting."

St. Dominic scored more runs in that inning that it had in any of its games. Seventeen runs was the most it had posted in a game this spring, doing it twice.

The 19-run sixth consisted of three Notre Dame pitching changes. The Bulldogs used four different hurlers in the game with Himmelberg departing after 3 1/3 innings. He gave up six runs, all earned, on eight hits and with St. Dominic ahead 6-3. Larkin, whose teammates call him Barry Larkin, delivered the knockout punch on Himmelberg with a three-run double, which was part of a four-run, fourth-inning rally.

"I just wasn't locating my two-strike pitches very well," Himmelberg said. "And I was letting them get back into the counts, and then there was a couple 0-2 pitches that I just left a little too close to the plate."

Bulldogs first baseman Wesley Glaus put the pickoff tag on Will Mulligan's face Friday during their Class 3 semifinal at Meador Park in Springfield.

Young replaced Himmelberg, and he escaped the top of the fourth without allowing anymore damage.

The Bulldogs scored five runs in the bottom of the fourth to give Young an 8-6 advantage. He responded by tossing a scoreless fifth inning.

But it all went downhill in a hurry for the right-hander, and anyone Graviett sent out to the mound in the sixth.

After Young surrendered the two-run homer to Mulligan to tie it, he allowed six straight hitters to reach base on two walks, two singles, one double and an error. Larkin put the finishing touches on Young's day with a two-run single to left-center field.

Young gave up eight runs, seven earned, five hits and five walks in two innings. He threw mostly fastballs, and in the sixth he was throwing them high.

"I left a few pitches up and they got a hold of them and hit the ball hard," Young said. "That home run kind of started it off for them. It got their momentum up and I walked a couple people and couldn't really find the strike zone after that."

Graviett said he had Young throw mostly fastballs because he lacked control with the breaking ball.

"I'm one of those coaches that I like to establish the fastball before we go to the curveball, and he just wasn't establishing it early on and he just left everything up," Graviett said. "He didn't make adjustments of getting the ball down."

Dylan Drury replaced Young, but he failed to record an out while facing four batters. He gave up two walks, a triple and one batter reached on an error. He allowed fours runs and was replaced by Tanner Hiett, who gave up Mullligan's second homer. Hiett recorded the final two outs of the inning, but not before allowing seven runs on four hits and one walk.

"Dylan just wasn't ready to throw," Graviett said. "He didn't have anything in the bullpen. ... He's a guy that's got to throw a lot of pitches to get going, so we were trying to milk him for some strikes. Tanner just hasn't thrown in a while. It's probably been three weeks if not a month in between his last time. So it really wasn't fair for him, but we had to do what we had to do."

Himmelberg said his team must forget about the semifinal blowout and look ahead to today's third-place game.

"You can't really get your heads down because we've just got to come back tomorrow and we've got to do the best we can coming back," he said. "You see an inning like that and it's just one of those unexplainable things. We really didn't beat ourselves that inning. So they just hit the ball really well. We need to accept that they hit the ball better than we did and just poured it on there for a little while."