Chicago, Ill.- July 22- 2-4 hitting, 2 homeruns, 2 runs, 3 RBI’s and a save was the stat line for this heroic Minutemen.

The MCL Minutemen (7-17) took down the Chicago American Giants (13-13) 5-4 with the help of Doug Loden’s (Joliet JC/ St. John, Ind.) fantastic game.

Loden got things started on the scoreboard with a home run in the first inning over the right field wall to put the Minutemen up early. In the bottom of the fourth, Justin Keresets (Northwood/ Loves Park, Ill.) reached on an error, allowing Zack Beatty (McBook CC/ Maple Park, Ill.) to score following his triple. Right after that, Ryan Nelson (Eastern Kentucky/ Aurora, Ill.) popped up a sacrifice fly to score Giovanni Lopez (Benedictine Mesa/ St. John, Ind.) for the third Minutemen run. The Minutemen came into the bottom of the seventh inning down by one run just after losing the lead the half inning before. Loden knocked another home run over the wall to score two runs, and give the lead back to the Minutemen. He felt good about the contact he made on his two deep balls.

“The first one was a bit iffy because I thought I got towards the end of the bat, but the second one I knew I barrelled it up and squared it over the fence,” Loden said.

With the game on the line, there was nobody better to turn to to hold down the lead. Loden came in with no outs in the ninth inning to close the game out. He forced a fly out to the catcher, then threw two straight strikeouts. 

“I wasn’t expecting that, but Coach told me if he gets in trouble you’re going in. I got up to the mound and started throwing gas,” Loden said.

Manager Deandre Gilmore was very happy with Loden and the team’s performance tonight.

“It was a great game from innings one to nine. It was really clean baseball. It feels great to steal a win from them.”

The Minutemen are now down just one game in the series with the American Giants 3-4. Tomorrow, the Minutemen will travel to Riverside Park in Hammond, Indiana to take on the Northwest Indiana Oilmen at 5:05 pm. Follow @MclMinutemen on Twitter to keep up with all the latest Minutemen news and updates, and follow @MCLMinutemen on Facebook to catch the live streams of every game.