Driving them batty

PORTLAND, Ore. - Fresh brown dirt still caked on her black shorts, Mackenzie Staples slowly walked back to the Sterling dugout from second base, took a seat on the bench and buried her blush-red face in her tiny hands. Tag. She was out. Her dance move off second base in the sixth inning of a Little League Softball World Series semifinal against the East Region champs from Robbinsville, N.J., went one step too far in Sterling's 1-0 loss. "I was trying to get on third and see if something happened," said a teary-eyed Staples, who led off the inning with a single that sliced the infield in half. "I knew I had to get to third. "I should've been more cautious on the bases, but that's how I always do things, anyway." Staples represented the tying run when Robbinsville pitcher Lauren Fischer noticed she was straying off second, almost halfway to third. She fired to shortstop Rebecca Freeman, who tagged a sliding Staples, prompting the umpire to call her out on a close play at second. Priscilla Aponte followed the play with a walk, to keep the game and Sterling's hopes for a berth in the World Series championship game, alive. Jennifer Rahn then followed with a single that would have scored Staples, who could only sit and watch. "I thought after I got out that everyone would be ticked," Staples said, "and that we wouldn't hit." The Sterling 11- and 12-year-old All-Stars play Latin America at 2 p.m. today in the third-place game at Alpenrose Stadium. They are hoping it's enough time to digest this heartbreaker. "We really didn't get time to enjoy it," third baseman Jennifer Rahn said of playing on TV and making it to the semifinals. "Now we want to enjoy it, now that we're not going to be able to go all the way. "We still want to be better than another team here. We won't be able to go out there and get what we want, but we still have another game that counts for something." Sterling couldn't make the few opportunities it had Tuesday count. The team was held to three hits and didn't get a runner past second base. Aponte and Sterling's defense, though, kept them in the game. Aponte allowed a run and five hits in the tough-luck loss. "We fought our hearts out, but our bats couldn't get going," shortstop Stephanie Kester said. "We just weren't making good contact, I guess." The forces were with Sterling several times, specifically twice in the second inning, when Robbinsville loaded the bases with nobody out. First, Kester fielded a ground ball and fired home for a force for the first out. Next, Rahn did the same on a grounder to third. Sterling threw out two more runners at home in the third. Fischer led off with a single and Leanna Gearhart reached on an error. Both were sacrificed up a base before Freeman bounced a ball to Rahn, who fired to Staples at the plate just as Fischer slid in. Staples squeezed the ball in her glove and tagged out Fischer after showing the umpire she still had the ball. Erin Wojton singled home Gearhart for the game's lone run. Then came another gem when, with Freeman on third, Wojton broke for second. Aponte fired to Bailey Oetting, who then fired to Staples to get Freeman trying to score. "Some of those plays scared me a lot," Kester said. "But we still got them." "In a close game like that, you don't want runners on all the bases all the time," Oetting said. "I think our defense helped us a lot. Our batting, we need to work on."