Aphorisms abound in baseball and one of the best can be attributed to Yankee great Yogi Berra.
"It ain't over 'til it's over," Berra remarked and the saying is equally true today as it was back in era of Mantle, Ford and Berra.
On Tuesday, the Wood River softball team traveled to Minico (3-6) for a Great Basin West Conference showdown and took the host Spartans down to the wire.
Trailing 3-0 in the top of the seventh, freshman Dani Stone led off Wood River's final at-bats with a single and Sydney Leopold reached an error, one of five Minico committed in the game.
Spartans' pitcher Amber Warth (7 strikeouts) fanned the next Wolverine batter for the first out, but the rally was far from over.
Genii Vert stroked a single up the middle to load the bases and Alexa Alberdi's fielder's choice was bobbled by the shortstop, scoring one and leaving the bases juiced with no outs.
Jamie Stone belted a deep fly ball to left to score Leopold and runners representing the game-tying and winning runs were on second and third with two outs.
Warth buckled down and fanned the final batter for a 3-2 victory, but the called strike was no where near the zone in coach Dale Martin's opinion.
"The umpire had been real good all game, but that final pitch was so low, she (the batter) could not have hit it if she had tried," he remarked and added,
"We couldn't take advantage of their errors. We had people on base, but couldn't get them around. The girls are playing tough, but we haven't gotten over the peak.'
Hailey's Catherine Beck (1-3) pitched six innings, fanning six, walking four and allowing four hits. Warth had similar stats with 7k, four base on balls and four hits, which were stroked by Genii Vert, Jamie Stone, Lisa Nilsen and Dani Stone.
"We played really well coming back from spring break," Martin said. "We've been in all our games."
Wood River (1-3) dueled Jerome yesterday and will host Sugar Salem today, Friday, April 8 at the South Valley Sports Complex in Hailey.
