The winningest baseball manager of all-time, Connie Mack, won five World Series leading the powerhouse Philadelphia Athletics.  He coached his teams to 3731 wins.  He also coached his teams to 3948 losses.  That's right: perhaps the greatest manager in major league history had a losing record for his career.  Baseball has a way of evening things out.

So, even as the Montreat College baseball team dropped two out of three on the road against a solid Milligan College team to open play in the Appalachian Athletic Conference, Coach Mike Bender could remind his troops that a baseball season offers another day, another game to even things out.

On Saturday, March 6, Seth Blevins pitched 5-1/3 innings without allowing an earned run to collect the win as the Cavaliers defeated the Buffaloes 5-2.  Jordan Sells' 2 RBI and Adam Speas' 2 hits and a run driven in sparked the offense while Blevins outshone a fine effort from Milligan's starting pitcher, Mike Gallo.

Bender watched as his team pushed all five runs across the plate in the second inning to raise their record to 1-0 in conference play and 5-6 overall.

Unfortunately, that big second inning did not create momentum as Milligan downed the Cavs 3-0 in the second game of Saturday's doubleheader.  The shutout loss meant that the Cavs posted 16 straight scoreless innings against the Buffalo pitching staff, as Milligan's Shawn Ray allowed only 3 hits over 7 strong innings to even the series at 1-1.  Ricky Morgan's bases-loaded triple in the 5th accounted for all the game's scoring.

The Sunday game - and final game of the set - did not resemble Game 2 as the teams combined for 15 runs in a 10-5 Milligan victory.  Though every Montreat starter had at least one hit, and Cody Moliterno's 2 hits and Geno Sanchez's 2 RBI stood out, the Cavs could not match the monster 10-run 7th inning posted by the Buffaloes.

Montreat starter T.J. Fussell threw well, pitching into the seventh inning and allowing 2 earned runs while striking out 9 batters.  Bender went to his bullpen when Fussell ran into trouble in the 7th, and the bullpen ran into trouble against Ricky Morgan and the rest of the Buffalo batsmen.

The two losses dropped Montreat's conference record to 1-2 and their overall mark to 5-8.  Montreat has a chance to reverse their fortunes as they travel to Southern Wesleyan University for one game on Wednesday, March 10 at 2:00 and then head to Kentucky to play the Bulldogs of Union College in a three-game weekend series.