Inside-the-park grand slam fuels Mt. Pleasant to 2nd straight win over Freeport

By: Dave Mackall
Tuesday, March 25, 2025 | 9:21 PM

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Dane Firmstone’s inside-the-park grand slam highlighted a nine-run second inning for Mt. Pleasant, and the Vikings beat Freeport, 14-4, in five innings in a WPIAL Section 3-3A baseball game Tuesday at Freeport Park.

Mt. Pleasant (2-2, 2-0) scored all its runs in the first two innings in its second victory in as many days against the Yellowjackets (0-2, 1-3).

“It’s good no matter who hits one, but especially when it’s your own kid doing it, it’s a little better,” Mt. Pleasant coach Chris Firmstone said of his son’s blast to the deepest part of the field.

Santino Marne went 3 for 4 with two RBIs and a run scored, and Jacob Kitz pitched an abbreviated complete game for Mt. Pleasant, which beat Freeport, 10-2, on Monday at home.

Kitz scattered seven hits while striking out six and walking one.

“It was chilly today, but it wasn’t as bad as it was yesterday at our place,” Chris Firmstone said. “The wind wasn’t blowing too bad here today. But, yeah, it was a little chilly.”

Dane Firmstone’s unconventional homer was one of two hits in the second for the Mt. Pleasant senior, who earlier doubled and scored as the Vikings sent 14 batters to the plate against three Freeport pitchers.

The Yellowjackets are playing with two starting pitchers and two position players sidelined by injuries.

“We’re finding our way with a lot of replacements,” Freeport coach Ed Carr said. “The game got away from us early — Mt. Pleasant is a very good baseball team, very senior-laden and they hit today — but I just challenged our guys to not quit.”

After jumping to a 5-1 lead after one inning, Mt. Pleasant added nine more runs in the second, highlighted by Firmstone’s grand slam.

With the wind swirling, his towering fly ball to deep center field danced and darted and dropped to the ground.

“I saw it fall in, and I was thinking, ‘Aw, I’ve got to get four (bases) now,’” Dane Firmstone said. “It was a pretty good feeling when I made it home.”

Firmstone, Cole Chatfield and Jordan Grieff all finished with two hits for Mt. Pleasant. Grieff also drove in a pair of runs for the Vikings.

Gavin Tola and Dustin Kohan led Freeport with two hits apiece against Kitz, who withstood the elements during a late Yellowjackets rally in the fifth to preserve the necessary 10-run lead to call the game.

“You just fight through it,” Kitz said. “It’s early. If you’re a fan, it would be different. It would seem colder, I’m sure. But you just have to make sure you stay ready.”

Chris Firmstone, who has led Mt. Pleasant to the WPIAL playoffs in his first nine seasons as coach, lauded his senior right-hander for his preparation in less-than-ideal conditions.

“It’s tough, especially for the pitcher having long innings like that,” Firmstone said. “The idea is to just stay loose and be able to come out there and do what he did. He did a nice job in those long innings of being able to stay loose and then coming out and throwing good strikes and being around the plate. A lot of pitchers will lose that because they’re not warm.

“This group of kids is pretty fundamentally strong. They know what they need to do. Mentally, they’re very strong, too. We work hard in the offseason, and we tell them the game’s never over till that last pitch is thrown.”

Freeport freshman Owen Westendorf, the third Yellowjackets reliever, held Mt. Pleasant scoreless over the final 3 1/3 innings, at one point retiring eight batters in a row.

“I didn’t like how it was going in the beginning, but I was proud of the way the guys reacted,” Carr said. “The second half of the game was much more like it.”

Tags: Freeport, Mt. Pleasant