By beating the Oak Grove Panthers last week by a score of 12-8, the Boonville Pirates baseball team may have set themselves up for bigger and better things come district time Saturday at Twillman Field in Harley Park.

As the No. 1 seed in the tournament, the Pirates also clinched at least a tie for the MRVC title by beating the Panthers. However, in a head-to-head game Monday night between Oak Grove and Pleasant Hill, the Panthers basically handed Boonville the title by beating the Roosters by a score of 10-9 in 10 innings.

Of course the game between Boonville and Oak Grove was close to say the least, at least for two innings as the Panthers jumped out to a 1-0 lead after the first inning.
However it was pretty much all Boonville after that with two runs in the second, three in the third and four again in the fifth to go up by a score of 9-1.

Needless to say Oak Grove didn’t go away quietly. While dominating the series for the last-two years against Boonville, the Panthers rallied back with two runs in the bottom-half of the fifth to cut the lead to six at 9-3. Meanwhile, after both teams failed to score in the sixth inning, the Pirates also but broke Oak Grove’s back with a three-run seventh to extend the lead to 12-3. However, in the bottom-half of the seventh, Oak Grove put a scare into Boonville with five runs only to fall short by a score of 12-8.

See Thursday's Boonville Daily News for the rest of the story.