Post 180 Suffers Third Loss of Season

After Falls Church Post 130 knocked in six runs in the first inning Sunday, the Vienna Post 180 squad fell short of a comeback with an 8-4 loss to snap its three-game winning streak.

Vienna's Mark Gunst, a 2012 graduate of Paul VI Catholic High School, started on the mound at Oakton High. After giving up six runs in the first, he pitched four strikeouts and gave up two hits and no runs over the next five innings. He struck out six batters total, including two in the first.

"Pitching was great today, despite that first inning," Coach Frank Werman said. "After he had a rough time in that first inning, he came back and blew them away, which is how he usually pitches."

Though Gunst settled down, the Vienna offense was slow to provide run support, holding at one run — on an RBI single from Billy McLaughlin in the first — until the seventh inning when Brandon Chandler notched an RBI. 

After Falls Church ripped a solo homer in the seventh and an RBI single in the eighth, Vienna added its last two runs with a Daniel Bayer RBI double to the center field wall, putting the final score at 8-4.

"I thought we played really well considering we're missing a bunch of guys," said Werman, referring to the high school seniors out of town celebrating Beach Week. "We had a lot of opportunities, and they made a lot of great plays. Sometimes we hit the ball well, just right at them. But that's baseball."

Vienna Post 180 (5-3) is averaging 6.7 runs per game eight games into the season, but Werman believes his squad has not yet reached its offensive potential. 

And they may just have to wait to reach that potential, as they will continue to suffer a shortage of players through the rest of Beach Week and the last of graduations.

"We'll just have to piece things together, maybe postpone a game, but all the Legion teams are in the same boat with that," Werman said. "I think [a game like this can be] good because some of the kids who don't get a lot of playing time got to play the whole game. As long as I have nine guys we'll be competitive, and we were competitive today We just had one bad inning."