Patriots rallied in cold for comeback win

Twenty-five years ago this week, the Patriots came roaring back for a victory.

The  April 13, 1999, edition of The Commercial Review featured coverage of the Jay County High school baseball team’s comeback from an 8-0 deficit for a 9-8 win over the visiting Marion Giants.

After a rough first half of the first inning, the Patriots chipped away at Marion and pulled even in the fourth.

The game was stilled tied in the sixth inning when Jay County opened with consecutive walks. Jody Missicano then smacked a single to score Brian Journay with the lead run. 

The Giants put runners on second and third with one out in the top of the seventh inning against Pete Byrum — he tossed five-plus scoreless innings of relief to allow the Patriots to come back — before JCHS coach Lea Selvey went to his bullpen again. Sean Landess struck out the only two batters he faced to earn the save and preserve the win for Byrum.

“I thought Pete did one heck of a job,” said Selvey. “We put ourselves in a position where we had to play well and our pitching had to hold them. Pete did about as well as you could ask.”

Jay County got in the hole thanks to committing four errors in the first inning that led to six of the runs for the Giants being unearned.

The Patriots chipped away after that, cutting their deficit in half by the end of the third. The breakthrough came in the fourth inning, starting with Doug Evans smacking the team’s first home run of the year. An Aaron Wilson single pulled the home team to within one, and then designated Derek Bantz drove him in to tie the score and set the stage for Missicano’s heroics in the sixth inning.