The Salisbury Falcons had the dubious distinction Saturday of being rained out twice on the same day against the same team, but at different sites. Their Lehigh Valley Legion winner’s bracket game against South Parkland should have been played at Salisbury High School, but rains left that field unplayable. The game was moved to Parkland High School, whose field was in much better shape. Then came a late afternoon storm that made that field unplayable.

Mother Nature’s cranky mood meant that the Salisbury players had an early morning wake-up call Sunday and worked to make their home field playable for them to face the Trojans Sunday afternoon. Their work paid off in one respect, in that the field was in good shape for the game. It was a dud in another respect because they lost the game 5-2, meaning they had to face the Carbon Monarchs in an elimination game later in the day.

Salisbury had opened their regular season schedule with a 10-2 win over Carbon at Salisbury High School back on June 4. Carbon used a five-run first inning Sunday to put the Falcons backs against the wall, but the regular season champions rallied and used a six-run second inning to take their first lead of the game. From there, the two teams went on a roller-coaster ride with Carbon continuing its fairy tale run, handing Salisbury a 10-9 loss and eliminating the Falcons from the tournament.

Salisbury will still advance to this weekend’s Region 2 Tournament as the LVL’s regular season champ.

In a game that can only be described as messy, 12 of the 19 runs scored were unearned runs.

A base hit, an errant pickoff throw and a groundout got Salisbury a first inning run, but the Falcons trailed the Monarchs 5-1 coming into the bottom of the second inning. With the first two hitters reaching base, Cole Warmkessel lined a single to center to plate the first run and one out later, Joey Galantini doubled to cut the lead to 5-3.

Back-to-back singles from Colten Hagadus and Nino Encarnacion tied the game, and another set of back-to-back singles from Kevin Cruz and Colin Wagner gave Salisbury the lead at 7-5.

With both starters out of the game early, the bullpens quieted things down a little until the Falcons finally got to reliever Matt Goida in the fifth inning. It started when Lucas Irwin led off with a single, went to second on a base hit from Warmkessel and then scored when Pete Dubois lined a single to center, making it an 8-5 game.

In the top of the sixth, Nino Encarnacion retired the first two batters before two walks and an error loaded the bases for Justin Marykwas, who launched a double off the fence in center field to clear the bags and tie the game. An RBI single from Tyler Baird made it 9-8.

The resilient Falcons put runners on second and third with one out in the sixth for Irwin, who hit a fly ball to center that was easily deep enough to allow Encarnacion to score from third and Salisbury tied the game at 9-9.

Leading off the top of the seventh, Derek Joyce drew the ninth walk of the day for Carbon and was sacrificed to second by Anthony Micholik. Dan Keer promptly delivered a base hit through the middle to score Joyce with what would wind up being the winning run. Salisbury then went down in order for the first time in the game in their half of the eighth, with Keer getting a strikeout and two ground ball outs to pick up the win.

“Coming into the playoffs, I thought that South Parkland, Carbon and Emmaus were going to be the tough teams, and it turns out that two of them are playing for the championship,” said Salisbury manager Scott Heppenheimer. “That’s a good team and you have to hand it to them, because they’ve played everybody tough.”

The Monarchs, who won just six regular season games, faced South Parkland for the tournament championship Monday and lost 5-3, ending their postseason run. South Parkland goes into the Region 2 Tournament as the Lehigh Valley Legion tournament champion and Salisbury enters as the regular season champion. The tournament begins Saturday with Salisbury playing Hatfield-Towamencin at Owls Field in West Lawn.

“I don’t know if we were tired or if our kids realized that they already had a spot wrapped up, I honestly don’t know what it was, but we just didn’t play well today,” said Heppenheimer. “We swung at a bunch of bad pitches and our defense was just horrible. You’re not going to win games like that, but we’ll go to work on those things and we’ll be ready for Saturday.”