REYNOLDSVILLE — The Federation League still exists.
It might be on life support, mind you, but the Sykesville Senators and Brookville Grays are playing a best-of-seven championship series that began Tuesday night with Sykesville’s 7-6 win at the Reynoldsville Senior Little League Field.
Game two, weather permitting, was set for Brookville’s McKinley Field Wednesday at 6 p.m. with Thursday back in Reynoldsville. Sunday is game four back at Brookville at 2 p.m. with games five through seven, if necessary, scheduled for next Tuesday through Thursday all at 6 p.m.
If rain knocks out Wednesday and/or Thursday, Friday might be used.
The league dwindled to three teams before the season started as the DuBois Rockets bowed out due to lack of organizational leadership. So it was a three-team setup with the Rossiter Miners in what was supposed to be a 12-game season.
As it turned out, just nine of the league’s planned 18 total games were contested. Rossiter managed to show up for three games and finished 2-1, electing not to play what would’ve been a setup of two best-of-seven playoff series to finish the season.
Instead, the Senators earned the top seed with a 5-3 record against the 2-5 Grays, who lost their only matchup with the Miners and went 1-4 against the Senators during the schedule.
“Our goal was to play a season, get the kids eight to 12 games,” said league president and Senators manager Paul Roman. “We were going to have two seven-game series if Rossiter had entered, so potentially there were more games but the goal really was to give baseball to these guys and the area from Memorial Day until August. So we’re going to achieve that.”
Naturally, the sloppy opening game of the series — three errors by both teams and a combined 12 walks and two hit batters — pointed to a scarcely played schedule.
“Both teams were a little sloppy and that’s probably because we didn’t play a lot,” said Roman. “Now that we played and doing it again Wednesday and Thursday, maybe they should get into a little bit of a rhythm.”
The Grays agreed with that assessment as well, but at least there’s still baseball to be played in mid-July.
“It’s been a struggle to catch our rhythm so far, just playing one game this week, taking a week, not getting on the mound and not getting people to practice, but it’s nice being able to play ball though. What’s better than that?” said the Grays’ Drew Beichner.
“We haven’t played since last Tuesday, so it was good to get back out here, but we’re hoping tomorrow we can clean up some of the errors we had in the field.”
Tuesday, the Senators scored the tying and go-ahead runs in the bottom of the sixth without a hit as they worked Grays reliever Ezra Swanson for four walks and a hit batter. Kaden Brezensky was hit by a Swanson pitch with one out and then after two outs, Swanson walked Dante Armanini, Carter Hickman, Garrett Prosper and Grant Lillard to force in the winning run. Brezensky raced home on a wild pitch that allowed him to get to third and then score on catcher Carson Weaver’s throwing error.
The Grays got Dane Lyle to second on a two-base throwing error by Senators reliever Isaac Knarr with two outs in the top of the seventh, but Knarr got Beichner to fly out to left to secure the win.
The score was close throughout. Beichner’s two-out, two-run single put the Grays up first in the top of the second before Ben Gritzer’s solo homer on a line drive to right-center and Brayden Fox’s two-out infield single pushed home Damon Foster to tie it at 2-2 in both bottom of the second.
The Senators went up 3-2 in the bottom of the third thanks to a two-out Grays throwing error, but the Grays answered in the top of the fourth when two runs raced home on a two-out infield throwing error.
Sykesville tied it at 4-4 when Dante Armanini singled home Sebastian Rhoades with two outs in the bottom of the fourth. Both teams scored runs in the fifth. The Grays’ Bryce Weaver singled to lead off the fifth and came around to score from third on a wild pitch. For the Senators, Ben Gritzer’s groundout scored Prosper to tie it 5-5. Grays rightfielder Dane Lyle kept the score tied when he threw out Lillard trying to score on a fly ball hit by Foster.
The Grays went up 6-5 in the top of the sixth when Tommy Smith singled in Swanson with one out.
Knarr threw the final three innings in relief of Senators starter Hunter Rumsky to get the win. He gave up two runs on three hits with two walks and two strikeouts. Swanson, who relieved Grays starter Ty Carrier, hung the loss in his two innings of work.