BILLINGS — The drought is over.
After the Billings Scarlets claimed the Northwest Regional tournament on Sunday, Montana is sending a team to the American Legion baseball World Series for the first time since Billings' Post #4 went back in 1962.
“I'd say that statistic was a big thing that we talked about. We kind of just used the word 'legends.' If we win this, we go down in the history books because it had been a while, so we used that as motivation for it," said Northwest Regional MVP Nate McDonald.
The Scarlets had to do it the hard way, winning five games in four days after losing the opening game of the tournament via shutout.
Billings had to scrape everything they could out of the pitching staff, which had a miniscule 1.64 ERA through 44 innings across six games.
“We burned our one and two in the first two days," Scarlets shortstop Kyler Northrop said. "Our third guy had an arm injury and couldn't even pitch this weekend, so we just had some guys step up that hadn't been in these kinds of situations before. All credit to the back half of the staff, because they all pitched like aces this weekend."
Even better than the pitching was the defense. The Scarlets went through six games without a single error, which often proved to be the difference.
“We focus on defense a lot. Keeping it clean all the way through is just a way you stay in every game. You look at that first game, a one-run game that goes into extras. One play, one error could be the difference there, so defense definitely wins games," Northrop said.
Dominant pitching and clean defense could again be the key for the Scarlets to make a run at the World Series in Shelby, N.C., beginning Thursday.
