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

By virtue of a pair of unearned runs in the ninth inning, New Ulm's Brewers squeaked past Searles 8-6 and now join Essig in play at the state amateur baseball tournament. First, however, the two teams settle who goes into the tournament as champion or runner-up.

That decision could be resolved tonight in a game at 7:30 p.m. at Johnson Park if Essig wins or be held over to Sunday for a deciding game if the Brewers win. New Ulm went into the regional as the third and Essig the fourth seeds.

New Ulm led Searles 6-2 behind the pitching of Jordan Milbrath until Searles scored once in the fifth and then three times in a wild eighth inning when Searles tied the game by scoring three runs on two hits, an error, a wild pitch on a third strike and singles by Briar Braulich and Dave Hatle.

Wade French then took over with the score tied and struck out three batters in the final four outs to get the pitching decision since it became a new game when the score became tied. Milbrath, a draftee from Springfield gave up only two hits until that eighth inning.

New Ulm scored the winning runs in the ninth before any out was recorded. A walk, stolen base, a couple of errors and an RBI single by Christ Peters tallied the two.

Joining Peters with two hits were Garrett and Kyle Fischer and Cory Schaefer. Tony Rolloff doubled. Essig got two-base hits from Zack Fischer and Dan Blackstad.

New Ulm ... 0 2 1 - 3 0 0 - 0 0 2 --- 8 - 11 - 2 - 8 LOB
Searles ..... 0 2 0 - 0 1 0 - 0 3 0 --- 6 -- 4 - 4 - 4 LOB
Jordan Milbrath, Wade French (W) (8) and Chris Peters; Briar Braulich , Casey Lux (L) and Steve Kloeckel, Briar Braulich (5).