New Ulm Sports Central - Preserving and Sharing New Ulm Area Sports History

ARLINGTON - Catcher Cris Peters hammered a walk-off two-run home run in the last of the ninth to propel Hanska to a 5-3 win over Cannon Falls and send the Lakers into Monday's state championship series with St. Cloud Orthopedic. It was Hanska's 30th win in 36 games this season and its sixth in seven games in the state tournament.

Hanska meets St. Cloud at 11 a.m. at Gaylord. A win then by Orthopedic means the championship for the team which beat Cannon Falls to get into championship Sunday. Hanska must win at 11 a.m. in its eighth state tournament game to force a deciding playoff game. The Lakers go against St. Cloud at 1:30 where the winner takes home all the marbles. For Hanska "marbles" should mean "golden slippers" as a fitting end to a Cinderella run through the season, playoffs and especially in the state tournament.

Hanska really stayed behind very long when Cannon Falls took two leads and then tied the game in the eighth inning. Cannon Falls scored once in the first. Hanska tied it in the third. Falls went ahead 2-1 in the fifth but the Lakers scored twice in the same inning and held on until the eighth when Cannon Falls pushed over a tying third run.

The ninth was might be considered Hanska's biggest history moment up until now.

With relief pitcher Matt Klein working since coming on in the sixth, Landon Rathmann singled and Peters followed with his home run. The two had hits when Hanska scored two runs in the fourth inning and each finished with three hits. Matt Suess and Brady Mosenden each had a pair of hits.

Hanska started Wade French, draftee from New Ulm Brewers, who went seven innings and gave up only an earned run. Mosenden took over in the eighth and gave up the tying run but gets credit for the victory.

The play-by-play for the entire game is reported on the link below. The link also shows a standard box score as well as a complete line score which is shown below also.

@ Arlington ..... 1 2 3 - 4 5 6 - 7 8 9 --- R--H--E
Cannon Falls ... 1 0 0 - 0 1 0 - 0 1 0 --- 3 11 2
Hanska ........... 0 0 1 - 0 2 0 - 0 0 2 --- 5 13 3

Box Score and full game recap:
http://www.minnesotabaseball.org/images/stories/statistics/2009/C/c37.htm