Twenty years ago: The game is never over until the last man is out

KEWAUNEE COUNTY – Just about every baseball fan is familiar with this iconic baseball adage. Unlike other sports, where a team can simply run out the clock, a baseball team must get 27 outs before the game is over.

Algoma baseball fans learned this painful lesson the hard way on the evening of Sunday, August 29, 2006, when the Algoma Penguins faced off against the Kewaunee Chiefs at Perry Field in the Shoreland Baseball League championship game. The teams had split the first two playoff games in the best-of-three series, and now the coveted title was on the line.
It had been 41 years since the Penguins had won a league title. A superb pitching performance by Algoma icon Tim Zettel, coupled with Lowell Pavlik’s walk-off single, gave Algoma a win over Two Rivers and the 1965 Cherry Baseball League title. It had been nearly as long for Kewaunee — 33 years — since the Chiefs captured the 1973 Shoreland League title.

Pleased that his team had won seven of its eight road games, Algoma manager Terry Qualman was optimistic entering the 2006 series.

“Our pitching has been outstanding and our defense has kept us in every game,” Qualman said.

The teams split the first two contests. In the series opener at Perry Field, the Penguins’ Ryan Klessig struck out 12 Kewaunee batters to pick up the win. Overcoming early deficits, the Penguins scored three runs in both the third and fifth innings to earn a 7-6 victory. The Penguins’ Tyler VanLanen collected three hits in the game.

In the second game at Kewaunee’s Memorial Field, the Chiefs’ Casey Mumper fired a six-hit shutout in blanking the Penguins, 3-0. Mumper used his effective slider in fanning eight Algoma batters.

Now, it was on to the third and deciding game. The significance of the game, coupled with the warm 72-degree temperature on this late summer evening, brought out an overflow crowd of nearly 400 fans to Perry Field. The huge throng filled all available seats with the standing room patrons spreading down the first and third base foul lines. The fans were about to witness one of the more memorable games between these two longtime lakeshore rivals.

With the Penguins leading by a 5-3 score, Kewaunee threatened in the eighth, placing the tying runs on base, before Chad LaLuzerne, entering the game in relief of Penguins’ starting pitcher Brad Novak, struck out two batters to end the inning. LaLuzerne, a powerfully built 6-ft, 4-inch southpaw who would play for the Penguins for 20 years, cut a commanding and intimidating presence on the mound.

In the tense top of the ninth, LaLuzerne put the tying runs on base by walking the first two batters. Chad then retired the next two hitters on ground balls. With 14-year veteran Steve Ihlenfeldt at the plate, the base runners pulled a double steal. The tying runs were now in scoring position.

LaLuzerne bore down and got two strikes on Steve. With the Penguins now just one strike away from their first league title in 41 years, the baseball gods were about to deal Algoma a cruel blow.

Ihlenfeldt swung at the next pitch and lined a double down the left field line to score both runners to tie the game. The next two runners reached base to load the sacks. Michah Bootz then drove in a pair of runs with a single to center to give Kewaunee a 7-5 edge. Second baseman Jake Schoemann added an insurance run with a run-scoring single.

The Chiefs’ Lee Waechter, who had gone to mound in the sixth inning, proceeded to retire the Penguins in the ninth to give Kewaunee an improbable 8-5 win and the Shoreland League championship. As for Algoma, it was clearly one of the most disappointing losses in the city’s long 125-year plus baseball history. It would be another 12 years before the Penguins would rise up and win a league title when they took a best-of-three series at Walsh Field in Two Rivers in 2018.