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Champion Hill Toppers allow Buckeyes to escape with wins

Ever the sportsmen, the Huntington Champion Hill Toppers Base Ball Club allowed the Cincinnati Buckeyes to escape back home with a doubleheader sweep of the local boys on Saturday, Aug. 10.

In two matches much closer than the score reveals, the Ohio boys took away a 9 to 2 victory in the first match and followed it up with a narrow 18 to 1 win later in the afternoon.

As a part of New Albany's bicentennial celebration the Huntington club helped set up a triple header day of base ball at Binford Park in the River City. Over 300 residents of southern Indiana came out for the matches, which included a second game between the Columbus Lady Diamonds out of Ohio and the New Albany Petunias - won by the local female ballists 5 to 2.

Hopes for the local boys were high as they entered the first match of the day against their longtime friend and rivals from Cincinnati. But ideas such as victory were as deceptive as new paint on a second hand wagon. The Ohioans scored seven times in the top of the first and the Huntington boys could not get anything going on the base paths. The fortunes of the lads were evident as the oldest Topper, "Weege," and the youngest Topper, "Half Pint," had six of the fifteen hits for the match.

The second match saw the curtain fall and fall heavily as the boys just couldn't do much more than hit beautiful aerial arcs that also seemed to find a home in the hands of the well-playing fielders of the Buckeyes. The Hoosier lads were only down seven to one in the bottom of the fourth with two outs when the Buckeyes scored 10 times to convince the county ballists it was time to head for the post match banquet.

It was just one of those days in which the fates that rule base ball decreed that everything would go right for one team and not for the other. So with their record at 6 - 9 the green clads head to Milwaukee and the Cream City Festival to redeem themselves.