OLD ORCHARD BEACH — After falling behind by five runs, the Old Orchard Beach Surge would score four runs and come within 90 feet of completing a comeback against the visiting Watertown Bucks in the bottom of the ninth, but fell short and dropped an 8-7 heartbreaker.

Trailing 8-3 heading into the ninth, OOB would get an RBI single from Sean Washington, a two-run double from Jordyn Van Atta, and a sacrifice fly from Nathan Schwertner to make it 8-7. With Van Atta on third, Rich Baerga would ground out to end the game.

“They battle every pitch of every game,” said OOB manager Skip Nathanson. “They had a couple of opportunities to score some runs, but our big hitters didn’t get the job done today. We put a good inning on in the last inning and made it close.”

The Surge were playing catch up for much of the game, falling behind 1-0 early on an RBI single from Watertown’s Alex Herig. OOB’s Jacob Fabry would hit a sacrifice fly to tie the score 1-1 in the third.

Watertown added two more runs in the fourth on another Herig RBI and a run on a wild pitch to make it 3-1.

Washington would respond with an RBI single in the fourth, then Luc Pomales would hit in the tying run in the fifth for OOB.

The Bucks then added four combined runs in the seventh and eighth inning on back-to-back, two-run singles from Collis Hunt. Another sacrifice fly would give the Bucks the 8-3 advantage in the eighth.

Pitching was key for Watertown, which kept OOB’s power bats in check all night. The Surge left a total of 11 runners on base in the nine innings.

“They just caught us at a time when our big hitters had a rough at-bat,” said Nathanson. “It happens, they have been coming through for us every game, hitting .340, .330 … it just didn’t happen tonight, that’s baseball. You have to go up there and take your hacks, and (Watertown’s) pitchers got the job done.”

After getting in a jam in the seventh inning, Nathanson met with starting pitcher David Ernst at the mound. After a moment of discussion, Nathanson decided to let his starter continue to pitch, only to have Ernst fall into greater trouble.

“I left him in because he usually gets stronger as the game goes and at that time we were coming back in the game,” said Nathanson. “We felt that we had the stronger of the two pitchers, then in the (seventh) he got in some trouble and we had to take him out.”

Ernst pitched 6 2/3 innings for the Surge, allowing five runs on 10 hits with three strikeouts.

The Surge are set to host Watertown at 11 a.m. today at The Ballpark, and hope to rebound after Monday’s tough loss.

“We just need to go home, relax for a bit and come here tomorrow and do it again,” said Nathanson. “Two good teams battling – that’s how we look at it. You can’t get to upset with one loss and you can’t get too high with one win.”

— Sports Staff Writer Alex Sponseller can be reached at sports@journaltribune.com or at 282-1535 ext. 323. Follow the Journal Tribune Sports Department on Twitter @ JournalTsports.