Miners beat Chugiak with walk-off grand slam

PALMER — Mat-Su outfielder Cameron Newell stepped up to the plate with the bases loaded twice in the final three innings Wednesday night. Each time Newell found a different way to push runners across the plate.

First it was small ball. Then it was time for the long ball.

Newell drew a walk with the bases loaded to help tie the game at 1 in the seventh, and blasted a walk-off grand slam deep over the right field wall in the bottom of the ninth to give the Miners a 5-3 come-from-behind victory over the Chugiak Chinooks at Hermon Brothers Field on Wednesday.

“He’s proven himself over and over and over. He’s a veteran player. He plays like a veteran player,” Miners head coach Ben Taylor said of Newell after the win.

With the Miners (17-9 overall, 13-8 in Alaska Baseball League play) trailing 3-1 in the bottom of the ninth, designated hitter Brandon Smith helped spark Mat-Su with a one-out single. Terrence Connelly and Paul Panaccione followed with consecutive walks to load the bases.

When Newell stepped up to the plate with the bases loaded for the second time in three innings, the UC Santa Barbara product took a similar approach at the plate.

Newell worked the count like he did in the seventh. After taking three balls and a strike, and fouling off a fifth pitch, Newell said he knew he’d hit a home run as soon as he made contact.

“Honestly I didn’t think he’d come back with it,” Newell said of Chugiak reliever Tell Taylor’s fastball.

Newell fouled off a fastball with the 3-1 count.

“I thought he’d come back with a slider, but was still sitting fastball for some reason. I just tried to get my foot down. Once I hit it, I knew it. It was a great feeling,” Newell said.

Newell’s grand slam was the first walk-off home run of his career. But it’s the Miners’ second walk-off grand slam of the summer. Outfielder Jonny Locher blasted a walk-off grand slam to lead the Miners to a 10-7 win over the Anchorage Glacier Pilots June 14. Newell, making his Mat-Su debut that night, scored on the Locher home run. Wednesday also marked the third game Mat-Su has won in the final at-bat this season.

“They’re tough. This is a tough group,” Ben Taylor said of his squad. “Everyone wants to step up and be a Mat-Su Miner people talk about. They rise to the occasion and play for each other. It’s really fun to watch them play.”

Mat-Su notched two of its five hits in the game in the ninth. Despite collecting only three hits through eight innings, the Miners prevailed, as they’ve done throughout the season.

“They were getting frustrated, hitting a lot of balls hard right at people. When you get frustrated, you try to hit the ball over people. But they did a really good job of staying the course,” Taylor said.

As Mat-Su worked to get things going at the plate, starter Ryan Hendrix was a workhorse on the mound.

Hendrix, a Texas A&M product, pitched seven strong innings, allowing two hits and one earned run while striking out seven.

“To get a hundred-and-something pitches out of him, and two hits and only one run over seven innings, we needed that. We really needed a start like that,” Taylor said. “Hendrix was awesome.”

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.