The Pocatello Razorbacks started their day by running a baseball skills clinic for younger baseball players.
As part of that clinic, the kids got free admission to Saturday’s doubleheader matching the Razorbacks against the Kimberly Astros.
When they took the field, the Razorbacks decided they weren’t finished teaching the kids how to play.
Pocatello scored 11 runs in the first inning against Kimberly and coasted to a 17-3 rout in their home opener at Halliwell Park.
“We’ll take that any day of the week,” Pocatello coach Mike Green said with a laugh. “We hit the ball really well. I’m proud of what we did today. It was nice to see and it makes coaching really easy.”
The Razorbacks (3-1) couldn’t sustain that in the second game and dropped an 8-4 decision. But in the first game, they appeared to benefit from the morning clinic just as much as their students did.
After spending the day teaching kids how to hit, pitch and play defense, the Razorbacks executed all three aspects of the game to near-perfection.
“I think helping those little kids made us think about what we needed to do better and what we should do,” said right fielder Wyatt Bowman, who had a pair of RBI doubles in the first game. “That made us go back to basics a lot easier, and we had some fun today.”
That was putting it mildly. By the time Kimberly got an out in the first inning, Pocatello had already pushed four runs across. Kimberly pitcher Sam Bourgeois never got another out, surrendering another four runs before the Astros went to their bullpen.
Eight of the nine Razorbacks hitters reached base in the inning, with first baseman Tate Harding and catcher Tyler Wise collecting two hits and three RBIs each in that one frame.
“We all hit the ball hard, every one of us,” Wise said. “We’ve been working on it a lot, and everyone’s pretty hot from high school still. We came out ready to play.”
That included pitcher Cole Ashby, who had every reason to take things easy but did not. Despite the Razorbacks handing him a 10-run lead, Ashby pitched as if the lead depended on him.
At one point, he struck out seven straight batters and he held the Astros to four hits. Green had to pull him at the end because of fatigue from playing basketball earlier in the day, but the coach doesn’t expect that to happen often.
“Cole’s going to be solid,” Green said. “He’s going to put the ball across the plate and change speeds. He gets stronger as he goes on.”
In the second game, Pocatello’s hitting wasn’t where it was in its first three games of the season. But after scoring 49 runs in the team’s first three games, Green wasn’t worried.
“I told the kids we’re not going to score 17 runs every game,” he said. “We’ve just got to make sure we have quality at-bats to give ourselves a chance.”
Pocatello will next play at Marsh Falls on Tuesday.
