Brewers bombed 14-2 by Knights in Game 3 of NDBL Finals in idyllic conditions at Taylor Fields

September 24, 2026 · 0 Comments

Knights capture 2026 Strother Cup with 10-1 and 8-1 victories in Games 4 and 5 in New Lowell

By Jim Stewart

The new Taylor Fields baseball complex has a Midwest vibe to it in mid-September—rolling green hills, acres of corn in the distance, and, as WP Kinsella described the Iowan setting in his masterpiece Shoeless Joe, “the sky was a robin’s egg blue and the wind as soft as a day-old chick.”

Thursday night’s Game 3 of the NDBL Finals, the turning point of the championship series, was played in this Field of Dreams setting. It was a contest featuring two long-time rivals looking for a leg up in a series tied 1-1. It would have been reasonable to expect Shoeless Joe himself to emerge from the left field gate on a perfect night for baseball as Brewers’ hurler Carson Burns took the mound and fired warmup pitches to veteran backstop Carter Burnside.

However, Shoeless Joe Jackson did not emerge from the left field gate to assist the Brewers and the idyllic setting was rocked by the visitors whose bat-around first inning featured three doubles and two singles—a rude greeting for Burns and the valiant Bolton Nine.

Instead of the ghostly Jackson, it was Knights’ power hitter Zach Haywood who strode to the plate from the first base dugout and smashed a three-run double over the head of Brewers’ long-time playing coach and right fielder Mike Wallace. It was the key hit in a five-run outburst that gave New Lowell a 5-0 lead after half an inning of play.

The Knights held their five-run margin until the top of three when Haywood resumed his hitting heroics.

He lashed a Burns offering over the centre field fence, just out of the reach of leaping Bolton outfielder Ben Sterritt. Burns bounced back from the home run shot by Haywood and struck out the other three Knights he faced during the top of the third to retire the side.

Bolton got on the board at the bottom of the third when Sterritt’s single was moved to third by Jack Larmer’s double—a looping fly ball that was lost in the lights by New Lowell right fielder Brandon Norrie.

The sweet-hitting Burns promptly drove in Sterritt with a GO3 to the right side of the diamond, but the single run was all the mighty Brewers’ batting lineup could muster on a fateful evening.

The rout was on in the top of the fourth when New Lowell plated four more runs to make it 10-1 during which Haywood collected a single to leave him a triple short of the cycle.

After Bolton manufactured a run when Burnside led off the bottom of four with a single that was cashed in by Paul Cota’s base hit, the visitors scored four more runs at the top of the sixth to stretch their lead to 14-2. When the Brewers failed to score at the bottom of six, the NDBL mercy rule took effect and the Knights claimed Game 3 with a dominant twelve-run victory. The visitors had stolen the momentum of the series.

There was no storybook ending for the Brewers on Thursday night.

Nor was there one on the weekend in New Lowell–only a storybook setting at picturesque Taylor Fields on Thursday and good memories of a riveting late season surge, two crisp playoff series victories, and an emphatic Game 2 victory in the championship finals that turned out to be the apex of the Brewers’ season.

After the 14-2 blowout in Game 3, the Knights exploited the Brewers’ severely diminished pitching staff and batting lineup both of which had powered the team through the first two rounds of the playoffs. In the end, New Lowell cruised to the 2026 NDBL championship on their home field with a 10-1 win in Game 4 on Saturday and an 8-1 victory in Game 5 on Sunday to win the Strother Cup series four games to one.