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Trent Athmann had reached third base with one out in the bottom of the 21st inning. The 100 or so remaining fans in the wonderfully renovated ballpark in Dundas stirred with anticipation.
Tyler Hebrink was in the batter's box for Bird Island and manager Mike Nagel tried to deliver the sign for a squeeze bunt.
"Tyler wouldn't look at me," Nagel said. "He wanted to be the hero by taking a swing. As it turned out, he was right."
Hebrink lifted a "soft line drive to medium center,'' Nagel said. The play at the plate was close, but Athmann was safe, and there it was, after 5 hours, 36 minutes, after 48 strikeouts and 662 pitches, in the second round of the Minnesota Class C amateur baseball tournament:
Bird Island 3, Loretto 2.
This is the 99th playing of the state amateur baseball tournament and there had been three 20-inning games: Hector 4, Stark 2, 1971; Cyrus 2, Fairfax 1, 1976; and Brooklyn Park 4, Elko 3, 2017.
There had never been 21 innings, not until Sunday (and then Monday), not until Corey Koskie bombed a home run to right field to give Loretto a 2-1 lead in the seventh, and then Bird Island tied it in the bottom of the eighth, and then three Loretto pitchers and four Bird Island pitchers put up 12 innings (nine through 20) of zeros.
"We had a no-hitter, nine innings without giving up a hit, but even then we couldn't get a run,'' Nagel said. "That young Koskie kid … he pitched his heart out, and then Loretto had a couple of drafted pitchers and they were outstanding.''
That young Koskie would be Caleb. His brother Bradley played first base, then had to serve as the catcher — a lefthanded catcher — after starter Chris Glunz took a foul ball to the head that knocked him out of the game. Another Koskie, Joshua, was Loretto's excellent shortstop, and his father, Corey, served as the Larks' 49-year-old designated hitter.
"He still can swing it," Nagel said. "Josh Kingery, one of the best arms in amateur baseball, tried to get a fastball past him. It was clocked at 91 [miles per hour] and Corey lined it way out of the park. You knew it was gone when it left the bat."
Bill Nelson, the Dundas baseball man, said: "Corey hit another rocket first time up. Bird Island had the center fielder extra deep and he caught it pressed up against the fence."
The major league connection on Koskie's home run included the pitcher: Josh Kingery, drafted by Bird Island from Atwater, is the son of Mike Kingery, a longtime big-leaguer.
Josh has not attended college. There was speculation he would be signed after this summer's draft, but that didn't happen, and there he was on the mound for 12 innings and 13 strikeouts.
"Josh had thrown about 150 pitches," Nagel said. "He would've kept going out there all night, but after the 12th, his dad looked at me and said, 'That's enough.' "
It was 12:15 a.m. on Monday when Athmann came home safely and made it enough for everyone.
Nagel is a member of the state baseball board, serving as secretary-treasurer, as well as the manager of Bird Island. He said that Mark Forsman, the board's president, keeps tabs on him to avoid conflicts of interest.
That said, Nagel was in on a decision to move one of the four Class C games scheduled at Dundas for Sunday to Waconia because of weather concerns. "That cost us $5,000 at the gate and in concessions," Nelson said. "We would've liked to play that game here next weekend."
As it was, Dundas had 4 inches of rain overnight on Saturday-Sunday, and the third and last game — Loretto vs. Bird Island — started a couple of hours late.
Nagel has an eye clinic in Willmar. He moved there after getting out of medical school in Chicago in 1989, became involved with baseball and started managing after "two or three years." His daughter Maggie and Jared Dettman, the Bullfrogs' second pitcher on Sunday, were married a couple of years ago and have a 9-month-old son, Cove.
"My wonderful wife, Dawn, was taking care of Cove in the Twin Cities," Nagel said. "When I left home in the morning, the game was scheduled for 4-something and Dawn said, 'I'll see you around 9:30 or 10 at home then.'
"I got home at 3:15 this morning, and she beat me by 15 minutes."
Three hours later, he was getting ready for a day with 45 appointments at the eye clinic, and still thrilled by that ballgame:
"After the hundred fans had left, and the teams had left, and the stadium workers had left, and the lights were turned off, I sat in the dugout and thought about how lucky I was to be involved in amateur baseball, in all these little towns with great ballparks, and how I'll never be involved in a better ballgame than this one.
"Talk about two teams that didn't deserve to lose — this was that game."
As for Koskie, the former Twins standout, he said that after 10 at-bats he was feeling a bit sore early Monday morning and, yet, that he might have to put in five more years to fulfill his dream as a ball-playing father.
"Shannon and I have one more son, our fourth — Sam," Koskie said. "He's 12, going into the eighth grade. I'd like to be on a team with all four sons. Sam should be ready to play for the Larks when he's 17."
