The way things went when Sauk Prairie and Portage squared off in a senior American Legion game on June 29, it only seemed fitting it ended with a suspense-filled play.
Portage jumped to a six-run lead after the top of the third inning, but Sauk Prairie rallied over the next two to go ahead by three after the fourth.
And then Sauk Prairie added a pivotal insurance run in the fifth and twice stymied Portage rallies — the final one put to a halt when reliever Lucas Herbrand induced Greg Koch to ground to first baseman Travis Breunig before promptly racing to first to take the toss from Breunig, ending the game with the tying run on third and giving the Eagles a 12-11 win at Sauk City Athletic Field.
"We always work on that, so when it came down to it, I knew what to do," said Herbrand, who stepped on the base a couple steps ahead of Koch. "Me and (Breunig) kind of have the chemistry down together — we had a good pattern right there for us."
As good as the duo’s game ending play was, though, so too was Herbrand’s performance on the mound over the final inning and two thirds.
The senior to be came into the game with the bases loaded and one out in the top of the sixth, and got an infield pop up for the second out. And then he pounced on a suicide-squeeze bunt by Jake Nelson, and threw to first to end in the inning.
Herbrand worked around a two-out error that allowed Ethan Greene to reach in the seventh, and got Koch after Green stole second and moved to third on a wild pitch.
"You just have to come in there firing strikes," said Herbrand, who was also 2-for-3 with a run and an RBI. "... Walks kill teams, so I just went in there getting the ball across the plate and getting our team to victory."
Something that seemed out of reach early.
Sauk Prairie (4-6) starter Jay Kuenster allowed two out, two run singles by Travis Hamilton in the second and Koch in the third as Portage scored eight times — only two runs were earned — over the first three innings to take an 8-2 lead.
But an RBI single by Brendan Coy capped a two-run Sauk Prairie third, and Travis Breunig’s two-run double highlighted a five-run fourth that gave the Eagles an 11-8 lead.
And Dustin Sliter doubled to right to lead off the fifth, and scored from second on the play when Koch airmailed a relay well down the third-base line — making it 12-10.
"It just kind of sums up what legion is about — games are up and down," Eagles’ manager Lucas Koenig said. "Teams have a variety of different line-ups going, so you never really know how the game is going to go.
"And that’s kind of what happened tonight."
