Pine-Richland infielder Paul Nussabum (2) strains for the ball as Zelienople's Alex Dunaway (23) tries getting into second basse during their Eagle County Baseball League playoff game Tuesday night. Dunaway was out at second and the game was halted by darkness with the score knotted at 9 after eight innings. It will resume at 6 p.m. today.

ZELIENOPLE — Tuesday’s Eagle County League baseball playoff game between Pine-Richland and Zelienople turned into a wild affair.

So wild, in fact, that it deserves a second day.

Pine-Richland rallied with six combined runs in the sixth and seventh innings to tie the game at 9. The teams then played a scoreless eighth frame before the action was halted due to darkness at Zelienople Community Park.

Play will resume at 6 p.m. today at the same venue with Pine-Richland batting in the top of the ninth inning.

P-R leads the best-of-three series 1-0. A Zelie win would force a third game, which would be played Thursday at Pine-Richland High School.

Trailing 9-5 as the top of the seventh began, P-R chased Zelie starter Andrew Emes from the game with three base hits and a walk. The last batter Emes worked against was Mike Wood, who singled home Andrew Nussbaum to cut the host’s lead to 9-6.

Reliever Scott Lumley walked into a hornet’s nest, taking the mound with the bases loaded and no outs. His first offering was a wild pitch that allowed Matt Kaminicky to score.

The next batter, Zach Sharrer, fouled a pitch off and was called out because his back foot was outside of the batter’s box. With over six innings having been played already, the lines of the batter’s box were no longer visible.

“I started playing baseball when I was 6 years old and have been coaching for the last 20 years and I’ve never seen that call made,” said Pine-Richland manager Jeff Kline, who watched his team’s rally continue despite the phantom out. J.R. Willard singled home two runs before Lumley shut the door with the score knotted at 9.

“We never gave up and battled back,” said Kline. “We told the guys late that every at-bat needed to feel like the last at-bat of the game. We kept getting guys on base and found a way.”

Pine-Richland reliever Eric Mikulan kept Zelie off the scoreboard in the bottom of the seventh and eighth and Lumley did likewise to P-R in the top of the eighth.

Zelie’s big inning was the bottom of the fifth when six runs turned a 3-3 stalemate into a 9-3 lead. Matthew Donnelly drove in Alex Dunaway and Brandon Durbin with a single and Pat Zehnder doubled in Tad Forsythe and Donnelly for a 7-3 edge, at which point Kline relieved Casey Thompson in favor of Matt Schuetz.

Nick Lewandowski brought in an eighth run with a groundout and Justin White added an RBI-single.

A day after Zelienople tallied just three hits in a 5-0 loss in Game 1, the team scored nine runs on 12 hits in a game that isn’t finished. Donnelly had three hits, including a double, a run scored and three RBI.

“He plays at John Carroll (University),” Zelie manager Stew Weimer said of Donnelly. “This is his first year with us and he’s one of our best hitters.”