Baseball splits with Seaman, Wohler walks off

Greg Woods, Editor-in-Chief

A glance at the previous 13 innings’ box score, spanning across two games, would have given anyone skepticism about Manhattan’s chances at a rally. After all, those 13 frames had produced just four runs for the Manhattan High baseball team that was struggling to find a rhythm at the plate Friday against the prolific pitching performances of Seaman.

Those four runs, however, had come in the fifth and sixth innings of game two.

Nick Wohler won it for the Indians and drove in two in the seventh.

With men on second and third and his team trailing by a run, the junior sent a grounder through the middle, and it snaked by the gloves of Seaman’s trying middle infielders. When junior Brady Woborny crossed the plate, securing the Indians’ 6-5 win, Wohler was mobbed. The celebration was on.

The victory was Manhattan’s only of the evening, after getting shut out by University of Kansas commit Ryan Zeferjahn 5-0 in game one, so head coach Don Hess implored his team to approach the nightcap with a clean-slate approach.

“When you have a game like we did the first game, you’re always telling your team, ‘don’t let that one loss turn into two. Don’t let them beat you twice with one game,’” Hess said. “Once we got some breaks, then I felt like we were fine.”

Wohler said the 0-2 pitch he saw on the game-winning knock wasn’t in his wheelhouse.

“I got a curveball that was low, so I was just trying to do as much as I could,” he said. “Hopefully punch one through for us, and [we] got the win.”

The game-winner came off Seaman’s Traice Hartter, the Vikings’ third pitcher of the evening. The first was Zeferjahn in game one, however, who was lights out. The senior threw a complete, shutout seven innings of two-hit, three-walk, nine-strikeout ball. Several scouts, whose radar guns clocked into the low-90s, were in attendance.

But for as gaudy as Zeferjahn’s repertoire is, Hess was more concerned with his keeping his team’s heads level.

“He’s real good. You just have to be real careful that his reputation doesn’t beat you,” Hess said. “He’s a phenomenal pitcher, but you just have to be careful you don’t put him up on a pedestal that’s unreachable.”

Junior Chance Henderson provided the Indians’ only two hits in the first game (one a bunt single), and his single in the fifth inning of the second game sparked Manhattan’s late-game resurgence.

“Chance has the ability to bunt the baseball, and when you can bunt the baseball on those struggling days at the plate, you can figure out how to get hits,” Hess said. “He had a nice night.”

On the mound, Wohler made a statement as well. The second-game hero gave MHS six innings and allowed three runs on five hits, one walk and three strikeouts. He fared better than senior Grant Munsen, who started game two and allowed three runs, but who kept Manhattan in the game long enough for Wohler to seal it for the home team.

The junior’s heroics were appreciated by his team, no doubt. But they didn’t appear necessary a half-inning beforehand, because Manhattan entered the top of the seventh up 4-3, with senior Josh Chapman getting the nod for the frame.

Chapman issued a leadoff walk, though, which snowballed and turned into two Seaman runs and a 5-4 Viking lead after seven.

“After [the walk], I was really focusing on trying to get a groundball; trying to get a double play,” Chapman said. “That didn’t happen either. It wasn’t really going my way, but hey, we got out of it.”

The bottom of the inning is, of course, when Manhattan atoned for its previous six innings of struggles.

The Indians are now faced with a road twinbill with Topeka West on Tuesday. In order to carry over their momentum from the walk-off, Chapman said his team needs to be sharp on both sides.

“We’ve got to pitch really well,” he said. “We also have to score. Like I said, we didn’t score until the fifth inning of the second game, so we’ve got to figure out a way to generate runs.”