The margin for error is microscopic in a high school baseball postseason. One gaffe here or a slip-up there can be what sends a team home.

Yet for two years straight, East Ridge has been close enough to perfect to finish on top.

The Raptors did so Saturday in dramatic fashion.

Trailing conference rival Mounds View 2-1 through five innings, East Ridge scored a run in the bottom of the sixth and seventh innings to win its second consecutive Class 4A state title via a 3-2 victory at Target Field.

They did so without recording a hit in either inning.

Will Preimesberger walked to open the sixth frame. Pinch runner Adrian Thompson stole second, took third on a passed ball and scored on a sacrifice lineout from Bennett Skinner to knot the contest.

In the seventh, Benjamin Rudser got on with a leadoff walk. Caden Stern came in to run, stole second, took third on a passed ball and scored the winning run on a wild pitch.

“Dogpile at home plate, never thought that would happen,” Rudser said. “It was awesome.”

Between the two scores, East Ridge (21-6) had to keep the game tied in the top of the seventh. That looked unlikely after Jack Glancey doubled to right to lead off the frame. But the next batter flew out to left, and Glancey tried to move 90 feet closer to home.

Bennett Skinner caught the fly out moving to his left. He hit the cutoff man, shortstop Luke Skinner, who then fired a dart to third baseman Alex Mezzetti, who applied the tag in time to end the threat.

It was perfect baseball.

To close the contest, East Ridge continued to execute every little play in an exacting manner under intense pressure.

“We work on it so much,” Rudser said, “and we try to perfect it as best we can at every practice.”

Exactly how much at practice?

“Nonstop. Nonstop. It’s a huge chunk,” Raptors coach Brian Sprout said of the team’s situational work. “I’d probably say it’s 60 percent of our practices on a daily basis.”

And it paid off in a big way when it mattered most. East Ridge had to find any way possible to manufacture runs Saturday in the showdown of star aces.

Mounds View (20-9) had Iowa commit Tyler Guerin, while the Raptors had Texas A&M commit Max Arlich.

The fifth-seeded Mustangs managed two runs off Arlich in the first after what was deemed an error at second base plated a couple runs. Third-seeded East Ridge got one back in the bottom of the inning off Guerin.

That’s where the score stood for hours — literally. The game was stopped in the third amid heavy rainfall. The delay lasted two hours.

In that time, Arlich largely focused on intake.

“Eating a lot of food,” he said. “It was a long break, and I wanted to make sure I had food in me from when I last ate.”

Both pitchers returned after the delay, and both were sharp. Guerin allowed just one run on three hits in five innings before giving way to sophomore Andrew Gette.

Arlich said the first-inning runs he surrendered only motivated him to lock in more. A year after throwing a complete-game shutout in a 1-0 title game win over Rosemount, Arlich didn’t allow a hit from the first inning until Glancey’s double in the seventh.

Arlich threw a four-hitter on Saturday. Over the last two years, he’s tossed 14 innings of championship game baseball without surrendering an earned run.

“I don’t know. It just feels like everything comes down to these games, and those are the games I like the most,” Arlich said. “Yeah, it’s the most pressure, but that’s when you succeed.”

And he’s doing so against top-tier competition.

“I think that we were just dialed in the whole entire game. I don’t think it had to do anything on us. I think he just pitched better. You’ve got to tip your cap,” Mounds View’s Aiden Bale said. “That’s how baseball works. You’re going to lose games, and we happened to lose this game today. You’ve got to tip your cap to the pitcher. He just outpitched us, and we didn’t hit him.”

That was a strong summation of the entire contest: well-played to the finish, with one team managing to make one extra play. And in recent years come postseason, that team always seems to be the Raptors.

“It is so much fun to be a part of good baseball games that are played at a high level. You don’t want to lose them, but that’s why we’re here,” Sprout said. “To be a part of them, holy cow, it gets you going.”

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OAKLAND, Calif. — The baseball he was throwing, Chris Paddack said on Friday night, felt like a dumbbell. The ball felt heavy, his body felt heavy.

For a second time this season, Paddack described feeling dead arm after a start, something that’s not terribly surprising given the workload he’s had in the past two seasons. Paddack underwent his second Tommy John surgery in May 2022 and entered this season having pitched just 27 1/3 major league innings in the previous two seasons.

“We’ve got to stay on top of that. I’ve had a rough four weeks,” Paddack said after allowing three runs on five hits with three walks and three strikeouts in 4 2/3 innings against the Athletics. “As I entered June, the body felt just a little heavy. You can prepare all offseason, all spring training, but a man that hasn’t been able to throw this many innings in three years now due to injury, you can’t do enough to prepare for this.”

The Twins haven’t done much to minimize his workload this season. Occasionally he’s had a shorter start or two, but they haven’t skipped one.

And to this point, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said, they weren’t ready to do anything different with Paddack. But they’ll take the next day or two to assess and then see where he’s at, the manager said.

“There’s nothing — and I use the word acute a lot — but there’s nothing acute going on right here,” Baldelli said. “There are ups and downs in everyone’s season, especially his, coming back from what he’s coming back from.”

Baldelli noted that Paddack felt this way a couple weeks ago and then saw a spike in his velocity after going through a dead-arm period. Baldelli called the dramatic ups and downs with Paddack’s stuff “not unheard of and not unexpected.”

But the Twins will still watch him closely to see if there’s anything they can do for him.

“We knew that coming in that there was going to be a roller coaster of events, up, down with the body and the mind,” Paddack said. “But … I have to get ready for my next start.”

Bullpen gets day off

Before Saturday’s game, Baldelli talked about how taxed his team’s bullpen was after a run of close games. Bailey Ober figured out one way to solve that.

“Bullpens are going to get beat up sometimes just because of tight games,” Ober said. “As starting pitchers your job is to sometimes go as deep as you can and try to give them a break.

How about nine innings?

Ober’s complete game against the Athletics on Saturday meant that a group of tired relievers got a rest day. The team also has the day off on Monday.

“We were really looking for something like this. You don’t normally get the nine innings,” Baldelli said. “ … This is the kind of win and performance by Bailey Ober that can carry on beyond today, for a while. We have an off day on Monday. You start adding this day and Monday together and you get a nice little reset for the bullpen.”

Briefly

The Twins close out the series Sunday at Oakland Coliseum. It will be their final game in the ballpark, which has been the Athletics’ home since 1968. Starting next season, the A’s plan to play at 14,000-seat Sutter Health Park in Sacramento through 2027 as their new stadium in Las Vegas is constructed. … Pablo López will draw the start for that game, looking to rebound after giving up five runs in four innings his last time out.

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Alex Junge yanks at the Creeping Charlie growing on the side of a garden plot overlooking Interstate 94 in St. Paul’s Merriam Park. The fast-growing weed isn’t native to Minnesota, though it’s made itself at home for centuries, he explains. Beer-drinking European explorers likely introduced the invasive pest in the mid- to late 1600s as a clarifier before the widespread use of hops.

“It was actually brought to Minnesota by the Saxons,” said Junge, waxing philosophic about his relationship to the hardest-to-love flora. “It’s all about control. It’s never about elimination.”

With something akin to boyish enthusiasm, Junge, 37, walks through the Merriam Station Community Garden pointing to juicier neighbors: a budding peach tree, a plum tree that will soon follow, an apple tree down the hill. There’s a tall white oak almost as old as the state itself, and another a short trek to its west. One of his edible garden plots grows peppers, tomatoes and someday grapes — give that effort a couple more years — while his second plot is home to all sorts of native wildflowers: Honeyberry, Wild Bergamot, the Cup plant, the Prairie Dock, the Pale Indian Plantain, the Coneflower and even the Maximilian sunflower, which could someday reach his own height, or taller.

The busy clatter of I-94 from downhill, beyond the Gilbert Avenue frontage road, doesn’t bother him any more than the railroad tracks off Prior Avenue to his east. With or without his two hearing aids, Junge, who grew up in Highland Park, is much more attuned to the sound of progress, evident in the buzzing from three manmade beehives that draw bees by the hundreds, if not thousands, the work of an ambitious fellow gardener-turned-beekeeper. He dare not stand too close, but even from several yards away, the swarms are a sight.

Alex Junge examines a milkweed plant in his plots at the Merriam Station Community Garden in St. Paul on Thursday, June 20, 2024. The garden has become a second home of sorts to Junge, who has Asperger’s syndrome — a neurodevelopmental disorder — after his personal care attendant in high school introduced him to the generous world of plants at a time when not everyone was as emotionally generous toward his autism. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Progress also is evident in the plastic tarp, measuring some 75 feet long and 30 feet across, held down by bricks along the hill slope. It will take a year to kill the grass beneath it, and even more weeding and hoeing to ready the earth for a community wildflower planting that Junge, a lead organizer of the effort, can’t wait to be part of.

Gardening through difficult times

Established by diehard volunteers 12 years ago on and around a sloping embankment overlooking the deep trench of the interstate, Merriam Station has grown to become one of the more sizable community gardens in St. Paul, hosting 100 plots and nearly 200 members dedicated to organic and environmentally sustainable gardening.

It’s also become a second home of sorts to Junge, whose personal care attendant in high school introduced him to the generous world of plants at a time when not everyone was as emotionally generous toward his autism. Junge, who has Asperger’s syndrome — a neurodevelopmental disorder — has used his gardening skills to green the back yard of the small group home he’s lived in for the past 13 years on St. Paul’s East Side.

Gardening has helped him through the difficult times, like the death last year of his roommate, a man he refers to only as Casey, to cancer.

The community garden has helped others, too.

At the far east end of the Merriam Station plots, just off Prior Avenue, a memorial garden hosts a plaque to a member’s grandson — Alan Geisenkoetter Jr., an 8-year-old killed in 2018 when a repeat drunken driver ran a snowmobile through the portable ice fishing house that Alan’s father had been setting up on a Chisago County lake. Alan — who was airlifted with head injuries to Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul — spent five days in critical condition before dying of wounds his family said at the time were far more grave than initially suspected.

“The whole community came together to make that garden,” said Junge, who knows the well-tended flower garden as “The Little Alan Garden.” During Sunday evening get-togethers around the fire pit, members socialize and strategize about more projects to come.

A range of talent

While weeding at the memorial garden, garden coordinator Noah Kurth said he appreciates Junge’s depth of knowledge about plants and insects, and his willingness to lend a hand where needed.

Junge is equally appreciative of Kurth.

“He’s a nice guy who can grow a really, really big beard when he wants to,” he explained.

Merriam Station draws a wide range of gardening talent, including newcomers to the field, and a waiting list. Sometimes it’s best to let people make their own mistakes, offering guidance if and when they’re open to it.

“We’re not a fan of micromanaging people’s plots,” Kurth said.

Alex Junge shows a flower in his plots at the Merriam Station Community Garden in St. Paul on Thursday, June 20, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

As Junge walks along the memorial garden’s curb, near the driveway turn-around where a personal care attendant waits in a van to drive him back to his group home, Junge yanks at Spotted Knapweed, one of the more deceptively attractive and preternaturally aggressive of the invasive weeds. Anything worth loving is worth protecting, or so gardening has taught him.

‘Seeing things grow’

Junge, who holds a part-time job in the winter months as a kitchen helper at the University of St. Thomas, calls the university “a fun place.”

Still, standing at the edge of what once had been an unofficial dumping ground off the highway frontage road, Junge looks out at what now may be the closest thing to his nirvana.

“I like seeing things grow, seeing things thrive, seeing bees come back, seeing birds come back, and the community come back,” he explained. “This is a really, really cool place.”

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