One of the most exciting plays in baseball is a play at the plate.

While they are somewhat common, to have more than one in a game could be considered rare.On Friday night in the Schuylkill County Teener League Tournament Championship game, Pine Grove and Tamaqua Penn Medical were involved in three such occurances.Those trio of plays not only provided fans with some excitement but they ultimately meant the difference on the scoreboard.All three times it was a Tamaqua runner trying to score. On one occassion, Penn Medical crossed home safely. The other two times Pine Grove prevented the home team from putting a run on the board.The defensive efforts allowed Pine Grove to win a 3-2 nail-biter and claim the tournament championship."We have a good outfield," said Pine Grove manager Frank D'Agostino. "They're a good throwing outfield. They charge the ball hard and they know how to play the outfield."That's all about playing solid defense."Tamaqua had a chance to take a 1-0 lead in the third inning, but Pine Grove catcher Stevie Zimmerman tagged Robert Amentler out at home attempting to score on Tanner Kehl's single to left field.The game didn't remain scoreless long as the visitors rode the momentum from their defense a three-run inning in the top of the fourth.Wade Bressler, Nevin White and Nick Cataldo hit back-to-back-to-back RBI singles to give Pine Grove a 3-0 lead.One of three Tamaqua errors played a role in Pine Grove's pivotal inning."Defensively, they made great plays on us," Tamaqua manager Dr. Peter Baddick said. "But, on the other hand, we had a couple of errors and one of those hurt us that inning. The game-winning run, at this point, was made on an error."So, they got two unearned runs on errors from us. We had some errors and that kind of cost us the game."With their caps on inside out, Tamaqua staged a two-run rally in the bottom of the sixth inning.Anthony Agosti led off with a single and Kehl followed with an RBI double.Troy Reinhardt than delivered a single up the gut, and Kehl tried to score from second. As the dust cleared at the plate, the umpire called Kehl safe pulling Tamaqua within 3-2.With two outs and Nick Thrash, who had reached on a fielder's choice, sitting on base Brett Kosciolek ripped a single to right to move Thrash into scoring position.Anthony Zaloga followed by poking a single to left-center, Pine Grove but Jed Blankenhorn saved the day for his teammate gunning Thrash down at home to prevent the game-tying run."That was all the left fielder," D'Agostino said. "He threw a one-hop strike and we knew he was out by 15 feet and that was the difference of the game."Unfortunately for Baddick and his Tamaqua players the outs at the plate kept them from capturing a title."We had the winning run on," Baddick said. "It came down to timely hits for us. We had guys on throughout the game (a total of eight runners left on base) and we couldn't get them across. For them, they pecked away at 'em. They put a couple of runs on us that one inning and that was it. That's the way it goes."I'm just glad we got here. It was a championship season for us. Unfortunately, we missed it by one run."Kehl (single, double, run scored, one RBI), Kolton Von Kiehl (two singles) and Anthony Zaloga (two singles) all finished as multiple hitters for Tamaqua.Pine Grove 000 300 0 - 3 5 1Tamaqua 000 002 0 - 2 9 3McCabe and Zimmerman; Zaloga, Reinhardt (4), Von Kiehl (6) and Thrash. W - McCabe. L - Zaloga.