FAIRBURY - Griffen Vater tore a labrum in his right shoulder during the spring baseball season, limiting his action to just eight games in his senior season.

The injury has also limited his availability during legion ball. On Tuesday night, Vater made just his second start on the pitchers' mound since early April.

"I'd only thrown about five innings since then," he chuckled.

Vater showed no signs of fatigue or rustiness Tuesday. In fact, he looked like he'd been prepping all season for the type of game he had.

In seven quick innings, Vater tossed 101 pitchers for Beatrice (11-9), struck out a season-high 18 batters, including his last 13 faced, to shut out and no-hit the Fairbury Landsharks, 5-0, at Quinn Field.

Vater's performance was more than enough to fuel Beatrice to its second straight win, and its first shutout win of the season.

Vater also led the Post 27 ExMark Seniors at the plate, going 3-for-4 with two doubles, two RBIs and a run scored.

"(Griffen) is just starting to get back," head coach Chris Belding said after. "We've thrown him in for a couple innings here and there. This was actually his second start (of the season), so you're not expecting him to go out and do that.

"When he has his curve ball working like that, good things are going to happen."

Good things, indeed. Vater was a first inning walk and a third inning error away from a perfect game. He struck out the side in innings 4-7.

"The game plan was actually to just go and throw a lot of fast balls," Vater said. "I was just going to throw it by them, but I threw a couple of curveballs and sliders, and they were working. So, I just went off of that and started throwing those throughout the game."

With the bottom of the third ending in a strikeout as well, Vater retired his last 13 batters faced by way of the K. Eight of those 13 were swinging.

Fairbury (12-10) didn't even so much as hit a pop-fly. The Landsharks had 22 total at-bats - 18 ended in strikeout, one in a walk, one an error and two groundouts.

Vater made 2.5 trips through the Fairbury lineup. As the game wore on, he was surprised at how hard and how often the Landsharks swung.

"After I got up with two strikes, 1-2 or 0-2, (catcher) Zack Zimmerman just called a lot of fastball high, and they were going after it throughout the game, so we got a lot of strikeouts that way."

Offensively, Beatrice scored three runs in the first inning, two in the second and one more in the seventh on six total hits.

The highlight was Brody Nelson's two-run home run to right-center in the top of the first.

Not only was it Nelson's first homer of the summer, but the first for any ExMark senior this season.

Beatrice plays a doubleheader at Millard South Wednesday, beginning at 4:30.

You can follow Tommy on Twitter @Tommy_NCN.

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