Monongalia Ballpark played host to its first New York-Penn League Championship game Monday night and Game 1 of the championship series did not disappoint. The West Virginia Black Bears made the most of its stadium’s championship debut as fans got free baseball, as well as a 4-3 Black Bears victory.
West Virgina, playing their inaugural season in Morgantown, needed 11 innings to get past the Staten Island Yankees in Game 1 of the best-of-three championship series to take a 1-0 series lead.
Staten Island got the scoring started in the second inning with a Zach Zechner home run and held the lead until the bottom half of the third when West Virginia got on the board. Stepping to the plate with the bases loaded, Carlos Munoz laced a bases cleaning triple to put the Black Bears up 3-1 after three innings.
West Virginia’s starting pitcher, Johnathan Brubaker, went seven strong innings allowing a run on two hits by the Yankees while striking out seven.
The Black Bears were in control of the game until the top of the eighth inning when Staten Island got a Zechner RBI double and a Brandon Wagner RBI ground out to tie the game at three.
Helped by a throwing error in the 11th, West Virginia got Mitchell Tolman in to scoring position for Daniel Arribas. With one out, Arribas laced a single up the middle to plate Tolman and win the game in walk-off fashion for the Black Bears.
Daniel Zamora got the win for the home town team as Jonny Drozd got the loss for the visiting Yankees.
Game 2 of the best-of-three series takes place at Staten Island’s Richmond County Bank Ballpark Tuesday night at 7 p.m. Should the Yankees even the series up, Game 3 will be held at Richmond County Bank Ballpark on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
