By MIKE KEMMETER
of The Gazette
Three swings, three home runs and nine RBI.
That stellar afternoon from Jason Pederson of Carbo's Junction Bar was more than enough to give his team the championship in the nine-team Amherst Softball Tournament last weekend.
Behind Pederson's homers and base hits from his teammates, Carbo's beat D.J.'s Speed Zone 13-1 in the title game Sunday afternoon.
Carbo's jumped on the board in the top of the first inning on Pederson's first bomb. Following John Barden's single, Pederson hit a two-run shot to left-centerfield for a 2-0 lead.
D.J.'s Speed Zone got within one in the second when Jason Olds' sacrifice fly scored Mark Blenker.
The two teams couldn't muster any offense in the third inning, but Carbo's built its lead with five in the fourth.
Pederson had the highlight hit, smashing a grand slam over the leftfield fence to give his team a 7-1 advantage. Brett Faivre scored the first run of the inning on John Barden's RBI single. Barden, Dan Keehn and Craig Kisting all touched home plate on the homer after reaching on singles.
"I tried to hit the ball out of the park," Pederson said of the grand slam. "(Pitcher Sam Molski, Sr.) threw a ball and then he gave me a pretty one. I was just too pumped up today and I just slammed it."
Carbo's basically put the game away with another big inning in the fifth. Keehn and Barden RBI singles plated Faivre and Kisting, and Pederson did the rest.
Pederson blasted his third dinger of the day, this one a three-run home run, to give Carbo's a 12-1 lead.
After holding D.J.'s scoreless in the bottom of the fifth, Carbo's ended the game by the 12-run rule in the sixth. After reaching on a fielder's choice, Faivre advanced to second on a Kisting single and moved over to third on a Keehn sacrifice fly. Faivre then scored the winning run on a two-out infield error.
All told, Carbo's collected 18 hits and stranded just six runners. Keehn, Barden and Scott Cychosz each had three hits, while Faivre collected two.
Even though he was the star of the title game, Pederson's teammate Kisting took top honors in the semifinal against D.J.'s Speed Zone. Kisting had three home runs in Carbo's 20-8 win.
"We hit well the last two games," Pederson said.
Because the distance to the outfield fence is shorter than many parks, the tournament allowed only one "home run hitter" per team. And players used what is known as a "melon ball" - a 14-inch softball to help keep the ball inside the park. Regulation size softballs are 12-inch.
"It's a bigger ball, they try to even it out," Pederson said. "You just have to hit it solid."
This isn't the first time Carbo's, a team comprised of Stevens Point and Amherst area players, competed in an Amherst tournament.
"We played in the Memorial Day tournament here and took second that time. We were just coming back for revenge, I guess," Pederson said.