Photo by Keith Stewart
Bryce Farris (left) and Nick Frerichs (right) bump gloves after Farris’ quick lineout grab at third in the bottom of the third.

Redskins get to experience Major League ball park for last game of the year

May 27, 2015

by Keith Stewart
keith@newsprogress.com

The Mattoon Green Wave might have avenged a season opening loss by defeating Sullivan 6-3 on Sunday afternoon, but win or no win, nothing was going to take away from the experience of a lifetime that the Redskins were able to receive by playing ball in the St. Louis Cardinals’ Busch Stadium.
“It’s awesome. Playing on a field like this makes every ground ball easier,” said head coach Troy Rogers. “It makes pitching easier. You throw quicker.  The adrenaline is going. You can’t have a better setting. And our pitchers threw well. They went out and threw strikes like they have been all year. Defensively we had a few mistakes, but there was also a bad call at first, which led to a two-run inning. And he apologized to me. He felt bad. That’s baseball. You have to learn from it and go on. But they had a great day. They had fun.”
The game itself was a back-and-forth affair with neither team doing much through three innings. In the bottom of the fourth, the Redskins (or Eagles if one was abiding by the scoreboard listing), fell behind 2-0 thanks to two errors and two Green Wave hits. And until the fifth, Sullivan’s offense had stalled, going three up, three down each of the last four. That goes without saying that the Redskins started the game off with their top three hitters in Alec Ballinger, Dylan Hart, and Nick Frerichs all coming within 15 feet or so of a home run.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.