Tell City falls to Forest Park in tight 11-10 baseball loss

Tell City scored enough to keep the pressure on all night, but Forest Park answered just enough to escape with an 11-10 conference win Tuesday at Forest Park High School in Ferdinand.

The final margin left little room for error. In a game that started at 6:30 p.m., the Marksmen were one stop, one pitch or one timely hit away from flipping the result, and the score showed how evenly matched the teams were from start to finish.

The loss came with Tell City still trying to steady itself after an 11-0 setback to North Posey on April 9. Before the Forest Park game, the Marksmen had dropped five straight dating back to last season, while Forest Park entered with seven consecutive losses of its own. That made the matchup a chance for both teams to reset their spring and prove they could finish a close game.

Tell City’s offense did its part. After the Forest Park game, MaxPreps listed the Marksmen at a .294 batting average and a .351 on-base percentage, with zero home runs. Those numbers point to a lineup that was getting runners on base and creating chances, even if the finishing blow never came. Scoring 10 runs in a conference game is enough to win on many nights; in this one, it still was not enough to cover the defensive and pitching lapses that decided the outcome.

Manning Webb leads the Tell City varsity program, with Caleb Malcomson listed as a boys varsity baseball assistant coach by Tell City Athletics. The Forest Park result fit the larger shape of the season so far, a stretch in which the Marksmen have shown they can stay in games but still need cleaner execution to turn those chances into wins.

Tell City did answer quickly. Two days later, the Marksmen beat South Spencer 7-0, ending a four-game home drought dating back to last season and moving to 2-6. That kind of response gives the Forest Park loss more meaning, because it showed Tell City could absorb a narrow defeat and still come back with a shutout performance of its own.