LINDEN — American Legion Byron Cox Post 72 left with a sour taste in their mouths Saturday as they went 0-2 on the day and saw it’s 2023 summer season end much shorter than anticipated. After winning game one of the Regional Friday night, Post 72 took on Terre Haute Wayne Newton Post 346 in the winner’s bracket game and it proved to be a pitchers dual throughout. Post 72 entered the seventh inning needing just three outs to not only advance to the championship game, but to also punch their ticket to the State Tournament. A solo home run by Terre Haute forced extra innings and Post 346 scored two more runs in the eighth to walk it off for a 4-3 win.
The loss pushed Post 72 to an elimination game against Madison Post 9, the team they beat 4-1 on Friday. Madison offense proved to be too much for Post 72 as they fell 12-10 and were eliminated from the Regional as they ended their season with a record of 20-11.
In game one against Terre Haute, Frankfort’s Jose Lopez got the nod and pitched well enough to earn the win, but Post 72’s offense just couldn’t get the timely hits they needed. They ended the game with seven hits but left plenty of runners on base. Terre Haute’s Bryson Carpenter was the one with the 7th inning equalizer as he sent the ball over the left field fence. In the top of the eighth Post 72 scored on a double from Quentcy Perry. An AJ Hall walk had the bases loaded with just one out but Brookes Walters struck out and Bryce Dowell grounded out to end the inning. Terre Haute began the bottom of the eighth with three straight singles and Ben Kearns had the game winning, walk off hit.
“Any play in that first game that late was going to be a game-changer and it was a tough hard fought game,” Post 72 coach Kyle Proctor said. “Against Madison we came out a little flat because of how exhausted we were from playing just 30 minutes before and it’s hard to have to get up for another game in that short amount of time. “
Three North Montgomery players even had a football scrimmage that morning before playing what was ultimately two games. Against Madison things looked bleak for Post 72 as they found themselves down 10-4 after compiling what was ultimately six errors in the loss. Post 72 wasn’t going to go down without one last fight as they scored six runs of their own in the fifth inning to even things up at 10-10. Madison responded then with two in the bottom of the inning to hold on for the 12-10 victory.
“When you look back on the season and we played 31 games in a month and half,” Proctor said. We wound up winning two-thirds of those, so that in itself is something that our kids should be proud of. We had a lot of obstacles to overcome between having kids hurt, and what not. It was a hard summer, but one that we fought until the very end.”
Post 72 will now wait until the next summer to see what the roster may shape out to look like. There’s not much debate that they’ve built themselves over the last 3-4 years as one of the better Legion teams in the state. Proctor and his staff will once again be on the hunt for the next crop of players to shape out the 2024 squad.
