American National's Marathon Week Concluding at Billiken Blue Invitational

ST. LOUIS—Even before the summer baseball season started, the American National Eagles St. Louis Amateur Baseball Association (SLABA) coach Bill Becher knew this week would be a tough one for his team.

With doubleheaders on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and single games on Tuesday and Friday, the undermanned and nearly overworked Eagles played eight games in five days.

On Friday, which was day two of the Billiken Blue Invitational, American National looked like a worn-out team, especially in the early going. The Eagles lost, 10-7, at Saint Louis University’s Billiken Field to the SME Lancers, an American Legion team from the Kansas City area.

“Yeah, we’re tired,” Becher said. “We should’ve beat that team. But our focus and concentration was off a little bit at the beginning, and we made some silly errors that cost us.”

Most of those miscues happened in the second and third innings, when American National committed three errors and gave up a passed ball that allowed SME to score six runs on just two base hits.

SME’s two hits in that span occurred in the third inning, and they were each RBI doubles off American National starter D.J. Johnson that made the score 7-2.

“I thought D.J. pitched pretty good,” Becher said. “We just didn’t help him at all. We played really bad defense. Guys are kind of tired, and it showed.”

American National got one of those runs back in the bottom of the third, when Hazelwood West High senior-to-be Oday Al-Yatim lined a single into right that scored recent Hazelwood Central graduate Mike Eagan.

Johnson pitched his best inning of the game in the fourth when he mowed down SME in order.

That brought American National back to the plate, and after two hits and a walk, the Eagles had a chance to tie the game with their best hitter, Michael Hardin, a senior-to-be at Trinity Catholic, coming to the plate.

It looked as if Hardin, who had drilled a shot off the wall earlier in the game, had tied it when he smashed a pitch deep into left field. But the ball didn’t carry far enough, and was caught at the wall by SME’s Chris Pinne.

“If the wind wasn’t blowing in, that ball is out,” Becher said. “It looked like it was going to go, and it just kind of died at the warning track out there. I thought he got it all.”

That near miss proved to be American National’s best chance to tie, as SME added runs in the fifth and sixth to get to its final total of 10.

American National did some damage in the fifth and sixth innings as well, adding two runs apiece in those innings to account for the final score.

SME is made up of players from Shawnee Mission East High in Kansas, which took third in last weekend’s Kansas state baseball tournament.

Al-Yatim was the hitting star on Friday for American National with three hits and an RBI. Teammate Conner Buenger had three hits as well, while Eagan reached base four times and scored three times to help power the offense.

It was no rest for the weary, as American National concluded its weekend with two more games on Saturday against the St. Louis Cougars club team and the Ontario Prospects. American National’s next true home game is Tuesday against rival program Eagles West at the Hazelwood Sports Complex at 5:45 p.m.