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Schlenvogt, Mustafa Lead Junior Cubs To Comeback
 ESCANABA---It was just a couple of weeks ago that Kadin Mustafa was laying in a bed at Marquette General Hospital, with a tube inserted in his chest. Mustafa was the passenger in a car driven by his uncle, John Miron, when they were hit by a pick-up truck carrying seven people in Schaeffer on June 15th.  But Mustafa healed quickly...he says, with the help of his uncle from above...and Mustafa was on the baseball field for the Escanaba Junior Cubs American Legion baseball team Friday night at Al Ness Field. Mustafa had two hits, a sacrifice fly, and he caught ten innings behind the plate as the Junior Cubs rallied to post a 5-4 win over the Gladstone Junior Indians. The win made up for a 9-6 loss that the Junior Cubs had suffered earlier in the week in Gladstone. The marathon, three-hour-long game ended in the bottom of the tenth inning when Johnny Schlenvogt slugged a double to the left-center field fence to score Courage Krueger with the game-winning run. Schlenvogt also threw seven innings on the mound, after Sam Hall pitched the first three innings for the Junior Cubs. Gladstone appeared to win the game in the bottom if the seventh inning when Ryan Arndt hit a grounder to short. But a throwing error kept the game alive for Escanaba. Schlenvogt led off the seventh inning with a hit and scored on that error. Then, Mustafa, who dedicated this game to his dead uncle, reached out and smacked a base hit to center field, scoring his Bark River-Harris teammate Arndt with the game-tying run.  Earlier, Gladstone had built a 4-0 lead on a two-run hit by Jake Strasler in the second inning, and on and RBI single by Marcus Madden in the third. A fourth Gladstone run scored on an error. Escanaba got a run in the fourth inning on a Mustafa sacrifice fly, and then Nick Dufour drove home Mustafa with a hit in the sixth inning to close the gap to 4-2. That set up the late-inning heroics for the Junior Cubs. A.J. Lundberg pitched six innings for the Junior Indians, allowing two runs on nine hits. Noah Olsen took the loss in extra innings. Arndt earned the pitching win in relief, allowing no runs on one hit and a walk in one inning. Schlenvogt pitched 6 1/3 innings of relief, allowing no runs on two hits. The starter, Hall, was tagged for four runs (three earned) on six hits in three innings. Click the thumbnails in the ARTICLE HIGHLIGHHTS box to see photos and videos taken frim Friday night's Junior Legion game.  |
