If the championship game of the 23rd District West American Legion baseball tournament were a dramatic production, it might have been entitled "New Baden v. Trenton 5: This Time We Really Mean It." With each team having won two games in the season series so far, New Baden came out on top in the fifth battle between the two teams, taking a 5-4 victory Thursday night before a capacity crowd at Pete Schumacher Field in Trenton.

With it, the Post 321 players delivered manager Bob Oster his first-ever district title, after having finished in the runner-up position five previous times. Post-game, Oster lavished praise on the Trenton team and the tournament organizers. "This tournament has been run first-class, all the way," Oster said. "I can't say enough about the job everyone who's associated with their program has done. I know a lot of kids on the Trenton team and I'm close to a lot of them." Watching the two teams mill together near home plate after the game, Oster added, "The kids are close to each other too, as you can see, and that's what it's really all about."

As close as the players may be off the field, they were fiercely competitive on it. New Baden's three victories over Post 778 were all accomplished by just one run. After splitting a pair of regular season contests, the team's played three more times in the tournament.

On Thursday, Steven Siegel started things off for New Baden and Rich Derbak finished them, winning the Most Valuable Player award for the tournament by capping his performance with four scoreless innings in mound relief. Derbak pitched a complete-game shutout for New Baden in its 1-0 victory over Trenton last Sunday night.

Trenton touched Siegel for two runs in the first inning, when Ryan Spicer nailed a triple and scored on an outfield error and Justin Dunning scored on a sacrifice fly. Daniel Covert gave New Baden a huge lift in the bottom of the second with a colossal solo home run that ended a fourteen-inning scoring drought against Trenton pitching. New Baden went on to score again in the inning, and took the lead in the third with two more. Trenton scored twice in the fifth to even matters, but after New Baden took the lead on Andy Kuehn's triple in the bottom of the inning, Oster was quick to insert Derbak, who held Trenton scoreless to preserve the win.

Paul Ritzheimer had two hits for Trenton, and Jim Ritzheimer also collected a pair of safeties. Kuehn had three hits for New Baden, and Covert doubled home two runs in addition to the home run. Siegel and Wilhelm also picked up two hits each for Post 321.

Trenton finished its season at 23-8.

Trenton Post 778's junior American Legion baseball team came close twice to beating a 40-win Effingham team, but the local boys third loss to the juggernaut knocked the Trenton juniors out of the Fifth Division tournament played at Highland this past week. The juniors finished with a 22-16 season record.

Trenton lost 4-2 to Effingham on Wednesday afternoon, spoiling a good pitching performance from Andrew Buehler, but stayed alive in the tournament by beating Steeleville Thursday.

In a rematch with Effingham, who had been upset by Edwardsville, Post 778 fell 12-2 after giving up six first inning runs.

Michael Diekemper picked up the 7-5 win against Steeleville with a complete game, as Dustin Pendergraft had three hits and drove in two runs and Chad Sellers doubled twice and drove in two. Matt Osborne also had two hits for Trenton, and Buehler drove in a run.

Trenton ended up fourth in the Fifth Division.

On the brink of elimination, Trenton got an outstanding pitching performance from Jameson Rakers and found a way to solve the riddle of Tyler Kehrer in winning a 7-0 decision over New Baden to force a winner-take-all game on Thursday.

Kehrer was dominant on the mound, striking out 19 and holding Trenton scoreless through six innings, but Rakers matched him every step of the way. If Kehrer won the strikeout battle, the Trenton ace used the mastery of "pitching to contact" to win the war. Rakers allowed just one New Baden hit in eight innings of work. It was Kehrer's first loss of the season.

Trenton scored its first run on a called third strike on Shawn Brueggemann in the seventh inning, what would have been the third out of the inning. But the ball squirted past the Post 778 catcher, allowing Brueggemann to reach safely and scoring Tyler Shaw from second base. Rakers bunted for a base hit and Paul Ritzheimer looped a double down the left field line to give Post 778 a 3-0 lead.

Trenton added four more in the ninth, and Paul Ritzheimer pitched the final inning.