MOUNT VERNON, Iowa – The weather may have been chilly, but the Grinnell College baseball team's bats remained hot as the Pioneers held off Cornell College for an 8-7 victory Saturday.
 
The Pioneers pounded out 17 hits, giving them 47 hits in three wins over Cornell this weekend. The win was Grinnell's third in a row over the Rams while moving to 3-0 in the Midwest Conference South Division and 6-10 overall. Cornell is 0-3 in the league and 5-11 in all games.
 
Jared Booth '21 erupted for a 4-of-5 hitting performance that included a triple and double. Benjamin Wong '18 and Quinton McNitt '21 each added three hits, with one of Wong's being a double. Julian Cabrera '19 also doubled.
 
Brock Weirather '21 had another strong pitching outing, going seven innings and fanning six while issuing just one earned run. Charles Carr '19, the third of three pitchers, worked 1-2/3 innings for the win.
 
Grinnell struck for solo runs in the first, second, third and eighth innings for a 4-0 lead. Booth had an RBI single to center in the first, McNitt hit a run-scoring single down the right-field line in the second, Booth doubled to right in the third to plate another run and an error allowed a run to score in the eighth.
 
However, Cornell came back with four runs in the bottom of the eighth to tie the game.
 
But Grinnell bounced right back in the ninth, as Wong knocked in a run with a single through the right side, McNitt added a sacrifice fly to left and Sam Galanek '18 sent across two runs with his single to left.
 
The Rams scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth, but Carr induced a groundout to end the game.