FIELD TWP- It’s been a good roll for the North Woods baseball team, starting out with a stellar no-hitter by senior pitcher Louie Panichi and following up with three more wins.
Panichi was a beast against Mt. Iron-Buhl last Wednesday, turning in a five-inning no-hitter and driving in four runs to lead the Grizzlies to a 13-0 win.
Panichi retired the Rangers in order through the first three innings and worked around two walks in the fourth, striking out two to keep the no-hit bid alive. He sealed it in the fifth with a strikeout, a flyout to center, and his eighth punchout of the game.
At the plate, he opened the scoring with an RBI double and later added a two-run single and an RBI hit-by-pitch. Talen Jarshaw followed Panichi’s second-inning plate appearance with a bases-loaded triple to push the lead to 7-0.
North Woods piled on five more runs in the third, with John Warren, Panichi, and Jarshaw all driving in runs. The Grizzlies tacked on their final score in the fifth after a Warren single and a Mt. Iron-Buhl error.
Panichi finished with four RBIs, two hits, and eight strikeouts in a hitless, five-inning outing.
“It was beautiful,” Grizzlies Head Coach Steve Baker said. “He had a no-no going until he gave up a couple of walks, but he was able to bear down and get the last guys out. And there were four really nice plays on defense behind him. The defense was playing well.”
Hill City
On Thursday, North Woods hosted Hill City/Northland, and this time it was the Grizzlies who went hitless. But they squeezed out a 3-0 win anyway, capitalizing on errors, wild pitches and stolen bases.
North Woods took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the fourth when Panichi reached base on an error and came around to score, but Hill City came back in the top of the fifth to take a 2-1 lead. The game went right down to the wire, with Cedar Holman and Levi Chaulklin scoring the tying and winning runs with one out in the bottom of the seventh.
Littlefork-Big Falls
The Grizzlies hosted Littlefork-Big Falls for a double-header on Tuesday, and the weekend break worked magic on the Grizzlies’ bats, as they pounded the Vikings in five-inning wipeouts, 11-1 and 16-5.
After taking a 3-0 lead in the third inning of the opener, the Grizzlies went wild in the fourth, batting around the order and scoring eight runs. The Grizzlies got singles from Panichi, Jarshaw, Holman and Chaulklin sandwiched around a host of errors and passed balls to round up all the runs they needed, as the Vikings could only muster a single run in the top of the fifth.
The North Woods onslaught continued in their next at bat, sending 12 batters to the plate in the first inning of the second game, including four who drew walks and another who was hit by a pitch. Before the inning was over, the Vikings turned the ball over to a new pitcher, but North Woods scored eight runs in the frame, getting hits from Jarshaw and Holman.
A hit batter and two more walks in the bottom of the third turned into three more runs for North Woods, making the score 11-1. Two LBF runs in the top of the fourth gave the Vikings hope that they might avoid the ten-run rule and get seven innings out of this one, but the Grizzlies put that fantasy to rest in their half of the inning. North Woods got a five-run outburst keyed by a two-run double by Alex Burckhardt, as North Woods closed out the abbreviated contest with the 16-5 win.
Baker is pleased with how his team is rounding into shape.
“The guys really found their bats after about midway through the (first) game, and their base running was phenomenal,” Baker said.
He said it’s good to see the team starting to play up to its potential as the work to develop additional pitching heading toward the postseason.