Twins overcome another rocky start to advance at State

Jul. 26—They call him “The Hammer.”

That’s the Lewis-Clark Twins’ nickname for third baseman and pitcher Carson Henson, a rising junior at Lewiston High who has fit right in with the AA Lewis-Clark club, after being called up from the Cubs midway through the summer.

He has fit in so well that the Lewis-Clark Twins are bound for the championship round of the American Legion baseball Idaho AA state tournament largely thanks to his contributions.

“I just love him. We call him ‘The Hammer’,” said Twins shortstop Guy Krasselt, who in August will report back to Harris Field for his freshman year with the Lewis-Clark State College baseball program. “He’s just fun to play with. He’s quiet, but he plays hard, and I mean, just gets to work. So it’s always fun having him up there because you know he’s going to do something good.”

Henson stepped onto the mound in a tense situation with the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth, fired three scoreless innings to close out the win, and slapped a single to spark a three-run seventh inning in the Lewis-Clark Twins’ 10-6 win over the Twin Falls Cowboys on Saturday at Harris Field in Lewiston.

The Twins will face the Idaho Falls Bandits at 4 p.m. today back at Harris Field. With a 3-0 record over the past three days, Lewis-Clark is guaranteed to play for the state championship on Monday in the double-elimination tournament.

“I don’t think the boys quite knew what was going on, so it was fun to be able to tell them in the huddle out there and say, ‘Hey, your hard work’s paying off, and your tenacity’s paying off. And now we’re in the championship,'” Twins coach Micah Brown said. “And we still got a little bit of work left to do, but it feels good to be in the driver’s seat.”

‘The Hammer’

By Brown’s estimation, the bottom of the fifth was the biggest inning of Henson’s young pitching career.

That’s because the right-hander entered with the bases loaded and the Twins’ lead sitting at two runs.

Henson permitted one of his inherited runners to score off a sacrifice-fly, then had to deal with another bases loaded situation after an error from Krasselt.

However, two straight flyouts did the trick and Henson escaped the inning unscathed.

“Carson’s one of our most reliable guys,” Brown said. “He’s got command of his pitches, and it’s fun to watch him come out and just challenge hitters.”

Through three innings pitched, Henson shut out the Cowboys, allowing one hit, with one strikeout and no walks.

After Krasselt’s error loaded the bases in the seventh, Henson was in his teammate’s ear.

“I was telling him he’s gonna make another (play),” Henson said.

And he was exactly right.

In the bottom of the seventh, Krasselt bounded to his right, stayed on his feet and directed the weight of his throw back to his left toward first base for the bang-bang play. The first-base umpire ruled the runner out and the Twins were two outs away from the championship round.

“It’s awesome,” Henson said of playing with Krasselt. “You always trust him back there at shortstop. He’ll get the job done.”

Comeback kids

Twins pitcher Cody Ells used 34 pitches to trudge through a tough first frame in which the Cowboys harvested five runs off five hits.

Ells struck out two, including the Cowboys’ nine-hole hitter, quickly beginning his dismount of the mound and walking back to the dugout as soon as he got that strike three call.

Ells largely settled in from there, firing three consecutive scoreless innings, striking out five, while walking three. However, he ran into trouble in the bottom of the fifth, allowing a walk, a single and hitting the Cowboys’ seventh-hole hitter with a pitch before he was lifted for Henson.

Brown said he was proud of Ells’ grit.

“It’s the beauty of having nine guys in a lineup,” Brown said. “If you don’t have your stuff that day, there’s an opportunity for everybody to pick you up, and that’s what these guys are starting to figure out. It’s okay to fail.”

Picking Ells up is precisely what the Twins did — even if it took a few more innings than the prior day’s game.

After a double play left the Twins runless with the bases loaded in the second, the Twins loaded the bases again and came away with two runs.

However, the Twins’ own mistakes and miscalculations left some runs off the board, when Green was caught between third base and home for the third out of the inning, leaving Lewis-Clark in a 5-2 hole.

Soon, however, the Twins’ patience paid off, and the team began to make its own luck, just like it had the day prior.

The luck came in the form of an infield hit off Krasselt’s bat in the fifth that fell directly in front of the plate. Krasselt raced to first as Twin Falls proved unable to make the play.

Later in that inning, the luck appeared as “the foul that never was,” — a dribbler off the bat of Jackson Casey that the Twin Falls’ pitcher could only stare at as it snailed to a stop and Makhi Durrett scored to cut the Cowboys’ lead to one, 5-4.

A Henson sacrifice-fly tied the game, a Grady Peterson double gave the Twins a 6-5 lead and a Ty Collins hard-hit grounder extended that advantage to 7-5 to cap an explosive five-run fifth.

Krasselt said that the players have grown to trust each other over the course of the summer.

It’s that trust that continued to motivate the team while down early and the roller coaster of big plays that fired up the dugout throughout the contest.

The dugout was perhaps no more alive than in the top of the seventh, when Peyton Bonebrake slapped a two-run double to left that put the Twins up 9-6.

“It just shines the light on our tenacity as a team, our ability to overcome the rocky start that we had, stay together and chip away,” Brown said. “We don’t have to do this all at once. Just keep with our plan, chip away at this lead, and we’ll have our big inning when it happens.”

Expectations and outlook

During the next two days, Lewis-Clark has the chance to accomplish what they have been talking about all summer.

The Twins could win the state championship. Win or lose Sunday, Lewis-Clark will be in the championship round on Monday, with a win that day clinching the state championship.

“I knew we had a good group of guys, and we started off hot,” Krasselt said. “And as the season went on, (we) just ended up trusting each other a lot more, trust my coaches, just trust ourselves. So I mean, I thought we had a good chance. Our coach’s been saying it since the start.”

Brown said he knew this group was capable of playing for such an opportunity when he and his staff put the roster of local All-Stars together in the spring.

For Krasselt, the focus of the next few days is clear.

“Play for each other,” Krasselt said. “Just come out with energy and just keep doing what we’re doing.”

Twins 002 050 3—1 8 1

Cowboys 500 010 0—6 9 2

C. Ells, C. Henson (5) and C. Robbins and P. Bonebrake; J. Bingham, H. Murray (5) and M. Stadelmeir.

Twins hits — G. Peterson 2 (2B), P. Bonebrake (2B), G. Krasselt, S. Hall, J. Casey, C. Henson, T. Collins.

Cowboys hits — C. Lee (2B), D. Carter, M. Stadelmeir, H. Murray, T. Walker, J. Bingham, C. Reyes, C. Fuller.

Other AA state tournament scores

Idaho Falls Bandits 12, Post 4 Runnin’ Rebels 5 (loser-out)

CDA Lums 7, Middleton Vikes 6 (loser-out)

Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2260, staylor@lmtribune.com, or on X or Instagram @Sam_C_Taylor.