By Ronnie Hughes

The Orange Leader

WEST ORANGE — A week that was plagued by torrential rain and flooding that kept baseball fans guessing and hungry for crucial district games finally ended.

Friday finally brought some much needed sunshine to dry out the diamond to see the West Orange-Stark Mustangs play host to rival Bridge City Cardinals at Ronnie Anderson Field.

The Mustangs seemed to found their stroke early, but fell apart giving away a 3-1 lead in the sixth inning ,allowing the Cardinals to comeback and win, 5-3.

The win pushes the Cardinals to 7-2 in District 24-4A play, just a half game back of first-place Silsbee, while the Mustangs slipped to 6-3 and into third-place.

The Cardinals seemed to have an eye for Mustang pitcher Payton Robertson, early in the game as they were smashing deep fly balls deep into the outfield. Tod McDowell sent a shot that could be heard across town over the left wall for an early 1-0 lead after the top of the inning. That was just the second Bridge City home run of the season.

The hard hitting Ryan Ragsdale  ripped a single into right field to score Jack Dallas and tie the game at one run apiece.

Blake Robinson hit a sacrifice fly that scored Jack Dallas for a 2-1 Mustang lead after three complete innings. Jack scored two runs on the night.

Robertson walked a couple batters later to load the bases with Chad Dallas slipping a shot past shortstop to score Bernard for the RBI single and another Mustang run. WO-S led 3-1 after four innings of play.

A wild pitch from Robertson allowed Gordon to cut the Mustang lead to just one run.

Austin Fitts in the seventh took a free base to bring across Justyn Romero and tie the game at three runs each. The Cardinals had no outs and bases loaded with Kevin Gordon coming to the plate. Gordon hit the game-winning shot just shallow enough to drop into right field and scored Rylee Harris and Schuylar Thibodaux for a 5-3 with just a half inning left. Gordon went 2-for-4 with two runs scored on the night.