It was a nail-biter for baseball fans watching the Blue Earth Area Buccaneers taking on the St. James Saints in baseball on Tuesday, April 19.

The Big South Conference foes met in St. James and the Bucs came away with a 6-5 win.

“We were up by one run in the bottom of the seventh inning and they had the tying run on third base and the potential winning run on second with two outs,” BEA head coach Paul Nienaber said. “Our pitcher, Caleb Langager, got the Saints’ batter to hit a grounder to Parker Meyers at short and he threw it to Nick Barke at first and we got to go home with a win.”

But it was not easy.

“There is an old sports saying that says, ‘They don’t ask you how, they ask you how many,'” Nienaber states. “That saying kind of epitomizes our game today.”

The Saints scored the first run but the Bucs tied the score early in the game.

Then, in the fifth inning, BEA broke loose for five runs.

“Logan O’Hara hit a lead-off opposite-field home run on a full count,” Nienaber commented. “Then, Barke got hit by a pitch, the Saints misplayed a bunt, we got some walks and were the beneficiaries of other mistakes. Things snowballed and we ended up scoring five runs.”

Trailing 6-1, the Saints scored once in the bottom of the sixth inning and had plated three runs in the seventh inning before the Bucs got the final out.

“The Saints pitcher today was very good,” the BEA mentor stated. “It was not pretty, but we got the job done.”

O’Hara started on the mound for the Bucs and threw two innings. He was followed by Anthony Carr, who pitched the third and fourth inning. Abe Kokos hurled the fifth and sixth innings and started the seventh before giving way to Langager, who recorded the final out.

“We are scheduled to play a lot of baseball over the next few days so it was our plan to use many pitchers today and keep their pitch count down,” Nienaber explained. “We had two more of our pitchers throw in the junior varsity game just so they could see some action on the mound.”

The victory gave the Bucs a record of 2-0.

“We are young and still learning,” the BEA coach remarked. “But, it is more fun learning from a win than from a loss.”