Clayton Baseball Connections Evident at College All-Star Game

The top college baseball players from the St. Louis metro area gathered for the St. Louis Metro Collegiate All-Star Game on Tuesday night at the Ballwin Athletic Association.

The game is a chance for some of the area’s best players to have some fun toward the end of the lengthy and hot summer baseball season. Along with coaches and scouts, local baseball celebrities often show up. This year featured an appearance by Lonnie Maclin, who played for the Cardinals in 1993. Maclin is from Clayton and is a Ritenour High School graduate.

Former major league pitcher Brian Boehringer also attended. He starred at before moving on to play professionally for several seasons on five different major league teams. He threw out the game’s first pitch.

Players from the  included C.J. Rose, Brandon Alexander and Drew Stanton.

In the game, the North All-Stars jumped to an early 2-0 first-inning lead, which they held until the eighth inning. The South finally grabbed the lead at 7-5.

Clayton Comets player Kyle Grieshaber, a University of Louisville sophomore who attended Marquette High School, hit an RBI single in the first inning to score the North’s first run. Grieshaber, a 2009 Marquette graduate, was a three-time all-state selection for the Mustangs and coach John Meyer.

In the fourth, the North’s Ryan Abernathy singled, and Alexander followed with a long sacrifice fly to increase the lead to 4-0.

Abernathy, a 2010 Marquette graduate, was a second team all-state player for the Mustangs. Alexander is a 2009 graduate, where he hit .392 as a senior with 35 RBIs.

But South outfielder Taylor Holman, who plays for the Wildwood Dodgers, singled and teammate Joe Winckel doubled to bring the South to within two, 4-2.

Holman, a graduate of , is playing baseball at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Stanton doubled and scored in the fifth to make it 5-2, but the South added a run in the sixth with a Jake Brower RBI single. In the seventh, Steven Kohler (Wildwood) and Max Byers (Kirkwood) had back-to-back doubles to make it a one-run game.

Stanton is an Oakville graduate, where he was twice named to the baseball all-conference first team. Brower plays for the Kirkwood Kats and is a 2009 graduate. He hit .373 as a senior for the Wolves and now plays baseball at Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Wildwood’s Ryan Hall, a Johnson County Community College junior who went to , had the RBI single that scored the go-ahead run for the South.

North coach Scott Turmail switched pitchers in the eighth with the bases loaded and no outs.

“I loaded up my lineup with pitchers,” he said. “I anticipated something like this.”

He also said he allowed every pitcher to face at least a few batters. “They all deserve to get in,” he said. Turmail is a 2005 graduate of , where he was a two-time all-state baseball player and one its all-time best pitchers.

South assistant coach Scott Goodrich said Hall is a solid player. Ryan got the player of the game award for his clutch eighth-inning hit.

Goodrich said that the summer season can be a grind and that the game is a good experience for some talented players to have some fun together.