The record for the Mannford Pirate baseball team says 5–18. Spend a week around Pirate baseball, and you can to see something else — a lineup that keeps putting the ball in play. Arms that keep competing. Kids who don’t quit, even when the innings get long and the scoreboard leans the wrong way. Over four games last week, you saw all of it — sometimes in the same night.
It started Monday, and for a while, it didn’t look like anything was going to go Mannford’s way.
Fort Gibson jumped them early — one run in the first, three more in the third — and suddenly the Pirates were staring at a 4–0 hole against a 4A opponent. The kind of start that can bury a young team’s morale.
They didn’t let it. The bottom of the third turned into something different. It didn’t happen all at once, but it built. Hits stacked up. Pressure mounted, then broke open.
Major Hilton was at the center of it, driving a ball through for a three-run single that flipped the energy in the dugout. Around him, the lineup kept moving. By the time the dust settled, Mannford had scored nine runs on five hits and turned a deficit into a 9–4 lead.
They didn’t stop there. In the fourth, they came right back with another surge—seven more runs, built on patience and timely swings. Max Moore worked a walk that brought a run home. Ricky Morgan followed with a single that plated two. Cooper Ausbern stepped in and drove a double that cleared the bases, three runs crossing in one swing. Corbin Mobley added a sacrifice fly for good measure.
Sixteen runs. Eleven hits. No errors in the field. For one night, everything clicked.
But baseball doesn’t always carry momentum. Twenty-four hours later, the Pirates were back at Fort Gibson, and the game felt different. They still swung and made contact. They still created chances. But this time, the breaks didn’t fall the same way.
Ausbern got them started early with a double in the first. Kayden Leslie and Ausbern each came through again in the third with RBI singles, pushing Mannford out in front. They worked counts, drew ten walks as a team, and pressured the bases with five stolen bags.
But a single inning flipped it. Fort Gibson exploded in the third, taking advantage of an error and a ball down the left field line to swing the game back in their favor. Mannford kept fighting — Ausbern driving in three runs, Mobley adding two hits — but they couldn’t quite close the gap. 10–6. Same teams. Different night.
By Thursday, the road got steeper. At Kiefer, the Pirates ran into a pitcher who didn’t give much away — 11 strikeouts, limited chances, and very little room to breathe. Mannford still found contact — Anderson and Leslie each collecting two hits—but the rhythm never fully formed.
They scratched across a run, kept battling through at-bats, but couldn’t string together the kind of inning they had earlier in the week. 6–1. One of those games where you adjust your cap and move on.
Friday night, it was Sperry. And again, the Pirates showed flashes. Luke Barnes came through twice at the plate, collecting two hits in two trips. He and Leslie each drove in a run, finding ways to produce even as the innings stretched. But the fourth inning got away — seven runs for Sperry, fueled as much by miscues as contact—and suddenly the gap widened too far to pull back. 12–2.
Another final that doesn’t tell the whole story, because the whole story is this: Hilton stacking three hits and driving the middle of the lineup. Ausbern doing it on both sides—three hits, four RBIs one night, three RBIs the next. Anderson and Leslie finding barrels even when the lineup struggled to string them together. Barnes stepping in late in the week and delivering clean at-bats. Mobley, Morgan, Moore—each finding moments where the game slowed down just enough to make something happen.