A few of the Ball State University baseball team's dreams died at the University of Toledo's Scott Park on Saturday.
Just six outs away from a regular season Mid-American Conference championship, the Cardinals were unable to hold a four-run lead. The Rockets scored the final five runs against a shaky Cardinals' bullpen to win 8-7 and become the first MAC team in more than a year to win a series against Ball State.
The series loss, combined with Central Michigan University's sweep of Eastern Michigan University, gave the regular season title and No. 1 seed in this week's conference tournament to the Chippewas.
The Cardinals, who had set preseason goals of winning every conference series and winning the regular season championship, will now have to refocus on their next goal of being crowned MAC Tournament champion. Ball State will open the double-elimination tournament as the No. 4 seed against MAC East runner-up Bowling Green State University.
"We'll bounce back from this," coach Greg Beals Said. "More so than not winning the regular season, not winning the series bothers this team more."
Eastern Michigan was the last MAC team to defeat Ball State in a series, taking two games in early May last year.
All three games at Toledo came down to the final batter. The Rockets won a back-and-forth opening game on Thursday with a leadoff home run in the ninth by Joe Corfman.
On Saturday, T.J. Baumet helped the Cardinals send the game into extra innings with a game-tying solo home run in the ninth inning. Ball State scored three runs in the 10th inning and barely held on in the bottom of the inning. Beals was forced to bring in Kolbrin Vitek, typically a starting pitcher, to get the final out of the game.
Splitting the first two games set up a must-win final game of the series, with both teams still alive for the MAC title. Though Toledo scored the first three runs of the game, Ball State responded with seven unanswered runs of its own. The Cardinals felt like they had put the game away when Vitek smashed his second home run of the day, a three-run shot, in the eighth inning to give them a four-run advantage.
"I was feeling pretty good about it, thinking we had the game clinched," Vitek said. "We just needed a couple more good innings."
However, the Ball State bullpen and a couple defensive miscues on a sacrifice bunt attempt allowed Toledo to advance the winning run to third base with just one out. After a pair of intentional walks, reliever Derek Grabner was able to induce a groundout before Jim Vahalik lofted a sacrifice fly to right field to bring home the winning run.
"It was a hard loss to take," Vitek said. "We battled pretty hard all day."
The Cardinals have a few days off before they open the MAC Tournament at 9 a.m. on Wednesday in Chillicothe, Ohio. Ball State has not won the tournament, which comes with an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, since 2006.
Last year, Ball State and Bowling Green were the top two seeds in the tournament after winning their respective divisions. But, they were the first two teams eliminated. That experience and the pressure cooker that the weekend in Toledo became could benefit the Cardinals this week.
"We played [28] innings under pressure," Beals said. "It was a championship-caliber series. It was great for our team to be in that situation."
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