Phones blared emergency signals in unison as Tuesday’s destructive storm approached Charles A. Huston Middle School in Lower Burrell. On the baseball diamond, host Burrell had just taken the lead against Deer Lakes in the bottom of the fourth inning when the storm hit.
With one out, the Bucs stopped there. What followed was sheer madness.
On and off the field.
“My heart’s still beating,” Burrell coach Jay Miller said Wednesday, forcing a smile after the Bucs’ withstood Deer Lakes’ furious six-run, seventh-inning rally to come away with a 13-12 victory in a WPIAL Section 3-3A game.
It ended in a flurry at Deer Lakes High School a day after the teams played nearly four innings at Burrell before the storm hit.
The Bucs (9-6, 8-4) moved within two games of first-place Mt. Pleasant in the section.
A slew of contests were suspended after Tuesday’s deadly storm that left at least three people dead and hundreds of thousands without power.
“We knew it was coming,” said Burrell’s Stephen Hasson, the Bucs’ starting pitcher, who worked four innings before the game was stopped. “Everybody was looking at the forecast.”
When the teams returned to the field Wednesday, Brady Plummer’s grand slam highlighted Deer Lakes’ late-game uprising.
“The kids certainly didn’t quit. They had every opportunity to cash it in,” Deer Lakes coach Chris Snyder said. “We were right there, one base hit away from breaking it back open. That was a good game. I wish we could’ve had one more (run).”
Plummer finished with five RBIs, and Noah Shurina added three for Deer Lakes (7-6, 6-4). Nolan Danka got three of the Lancers’ 13 hits.
While the outcome favored Burrell, players and coaches were aware of the heartbreak brought on by the storm’s immense damage.
“Honestly, on my way here today, baseball was one of the last things on my mind,” Snyder said. “It’s a disaster where I live in Hampton. Fortunately, my house was OK. My three neighbors all have trees on their homes. Two of them have trees in their homes. Like punctured through the roof. It’s bad.”
Officials said Hampton was among the municipalities hit the hardest by the storm.
Burrell overcame a pair of one-run deficits Tuesday and was leading 11-5 when play was suspended. The Bucs took advantage of seven Deer Lakes errors, five of which occurred during a stretch that included six Burrell bunts.
“(Tuesday), we had the worst inning of our season,” Snyder said. “We couldn’t field a bunt. To their credit, they were bunting perfect. You couldn’t defend it. We were tossing it around, and they scored all those runs. It was pretty crazy. Then, to come back here, we hit the ball. We didn’t quit.”
Hasson was awarded the victory after Burrell’s seven-run explosion in the fourth inning erased a one-run deficit. The Bucs, who finished with just seven hits, got two RBIs each from Ryan Wass and Nolan Brouwer.
“We were trying to get through that fifth inning, so we could get done the with the game,” Hasson said. “It is what it is. We came out here today and got it done.”
The victory was Burrell’s third in the past four games and salvaged a split of the two-game series. Deer Lakes won the opener on Monday, 3-0, behind Anthony Smith’s two-run home run.
When play resumed Wednesday, it looked as though Burrell would coast after the Bucs’ lead swelled to 13-6 heading to the top of the seventh.
But Deer Lakes reached reliever Adam Wass for six runs (five earned). He sandwiched one-third of an inning between two stints by brother Ryan, who totaled 2 2/3 innings and earned the save, giving up four hits and one earned run.
“We saw Ryan starting to get touched up a little bit there in the sixth inning, so we decided to go to this brother, (Adam) in the seventh,” Miller said. “He struggled to throw strikes, and when he was throwing strikes, usually they were hitting the ball.”
Adam Wass walked four and gave up three hits, including Plummer’s grand slam, before Ryan Wass returned to the mound for Burrell.
“We decided to go back to Ryan, and, thankfully, he closed it out for us,” Miller said.