By Randy Wilker
Sports Correspondent
NEW BREMEN – The top of the lineup for the New Bremen ACME baseball team exploded for 10 runs Tuesday evening and the Cardinals defeated the Celina ACME Bulldogs 12-2 in five innings.

“You have to play up to your abilities,” assistant coach Mark Keller said. “Tonight we hit the ball good and got the runs in.”
New Bremen starting pitcher Hank Zwiep ran into a little trouble in the first inning when he issued two, one-out walks, but got the next batter to pop up and the third out on a ground ball to third to get out of trouble.
The Cardinals started their hitting right from the beginning. After a ground out, Zwiep drew a walk and Jared Cox singled. Both runners came home when Spencer Rohr smacked a triple to the fence in left-center field. Rohr scored the third run on a sacrifice fly to center by Caleb Cox.
In the game Crisp was 2-for-4 and two runs scored. Zwiep had three walks and a sacrifice bunt and scored three runs. Jared Cox was 4-for-4 with three runs scored and two runs batted in.
Spencer Rohr was 2-for-3 with three runs batted in and a triple and double and two runs scored. Caleb Cox was 2-for-3 with five runs batted in and he scored once.
“Caleb Cox came through big for us,” Keller said. “The past couple games our trouble has been that we can get the runners on base, but we can’t get them in. We can get them on and get them over, but we can’t get them in. In the last two games we had the bases loaded three times, but couldn’t get them in until tonight.
New Bremen (6-3) came back strong in the third inning when they increased their scoring output to four runs. Zwiep led off with a walk and Jared Cox reached on an infield single.
Rohr attempted to bunt but the ball hit him out of the box for the first out of the inning. Caleb Cox launched a double to left to score Zwirp and Jared Cox. Caleb Cox advanced to third on a wild pitch as Adam Meyer drew a walk. He stole second and Cox came home to score on an error. Following a strikeout, Meyer scored on a single by Jordan Schott to make the score 7-0.
Celina did their only damage in the top of the fourth inning. Josh Leonard led off with a single to right and scored on a double to center by Derek Bader. Bader advanced to third on a wild pitch and scored on a sacrifice fly by Heiby to cut the lead to 7-2.
In the bottom of the fourth New Bremen answered with another four run inning. Dylan Crisp led off with a double to left and stole third. After a walk to Zwiep, Crisp came home on a single by Jared Cox. Zwiep came home on a double by Rohr and Cox Rohr scored on a single by Caleb Cox to make the score 11-2.
New Bremen ended the game in the bottom of the fifth when Crisp singled to left, went to second on a wild pitch and advanced to third on a sacrifice bunt by Zwiep. The game ended on a single off the shortstops’ glove for the 12-2 victory.
Hank Zwiep pitched the complete game for the victory giving up two runs on only two hits. He walked two, hit a batter and struck out one.
“Hank had an unbelievable game on the mound,” Keller said. “He got out of trouble in the first and then got on a roll to finish the game. He has probably been our most consistent pitcher this year.”