Post 180 Season Ends with State Tourney Loss

The Vienna Post 180 season came to an end with a 7-6 loss to Mechanicsville Post 175 at the Virginia American Legion Senior Baseball Tournament on Thursday, ranking the squad at fourth in the state.

After ending day one of the double-elimination tournament with a split 1-1 record, Post 180's second loss takes them out of the running for the state title.

Post 180 qualified for the tournament after dominating the District 17 Tournament last week to since 2007.

Post 180 stayed ahead most of the game Thursday night, but Mechanicsville's RBI sacrifice fly in the bottom of the eighth inning proved to the game-winner.

Vienna jumped ahead in the first two innings to take a 6-3 lead. Post 180 scored two runs in the first inning on a RBI groundout from Jack Anzilotti and an RBI single from Tim Davis.

Though Mechanicsville answered with three runs in the bottom of the first, Post 180 pulled ahead with four runs in the second. The first three Post 180 runs of the second were scored on errors; Davis knocked in their last run of the game on an RBI groundout.

Post 180 held onto the lead until the fifth inning when Post 175 scored an unearned run on an RBI single to tie the game at 6-6. Mechanicsville broke the tie with an unearned run on a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the eighth, which went unanswered.

"We played pretty well for most of the tournament," Coach Frank Werman said. "We just couldn't get our offense going against Albemarle on Wednesday, which put us in the losers' bracket, and that's just a tougher route to a championship."

Over the four games Vienna played in the tournament, they amassed 11 errors while their opponents totaled 16. Though Werman held players accountable for some of the errors, he also blamed the field conditions.

"This was the worst field we played on this year," Werman said of the American Legion Sports Complex in Fredericksburg. "Then add that we had to play after rain delays and at night with the dew, and it was just bad conditions for all teams involved."

Earlier in the day, Post 180 defeated Manassas Post 158 9-3 with RBIs credited to Brandon Chandler (4), Davis (3) and Dennis Cooney (1). Mark Gunst pitched 8 1/3 innings for three strikeouts and nine hits, with two of Manassas' three runs unearned.

Post 180's elimination loss Thursday marked their ninth loss of the 2012 season, tallying 27 wins. Before the start of the state tournament, Vienna had won 12 of their last 13 games.

"I think the competition varied in the tournament, but I do think two teams were probably legitimately better than us: Lynchburg and Mechanicsville," Werman said. "But having said that, we had a chance to beat Mechanicsville. We were in that game, and I think we could have had a shot with Lynchburg, too."

The Vienna pitching staff entered the tournament with a 2.06 ERA, which has since risen to 2.17 — the lowest ERA in Post 180 baseball history, breaking the previous record of 2.29 set in 1983.

But after the squad entered the losers' bracket with their first loss Wednesday night, even Post 180's stellar staff started to seem too thin to make it to the end.

"Truth is if we won last night, I'm not sure how we would have pieced together the pitchers needed to win three straight games to win the championship," Werman said. 

Though the season has ended, the squad will meet one last time before the end of the summer for a cookout at American Legion Post 180 in Vienna, at which Henry Brandmark will receive his MVP trophy. Brandmark had the team-high batting average of .374, a .995 fielding percentage as primarily a first baseman, and served as a relief pitcher with a 0.74 ERA in 13 appearances.

"I really enjoyed coaching this team. The pitching all season was awesome, and we were never out of games. Every game we lost we had a shot. They came to play," Werman said. "These kids are just really good kids. The camaraderie was fantastic this year. It was just a blast."