Sure signs of spring are warmer temperatures, birds singing and town baseball. The Chaska Cubs opened their 98th season at home on May 10 against Eden Prairie-based Baseball 365 at historic Chaska Athletic Park. The Cubs entered the game having secured an 11-3 win over Young America on May 3. The Cubs dropped an early-season game to 365 last year, 10-9.
Lefty Drake Kilber took the mound for the Cubs and struck out the first two batters. Kilber went three scoreless innings with three strikeouts, two walks and two hits allowed. Pete Ohnsorg took over and pitched the next three innings. Veteran Andy Dauwalter also saw time on the mound.
While Cubs pitching was solid in the opener, so was Baseball 365’s. They got three hits in each of the first four innings while the Cubs did not register a hit until Wyatt Rodgers put one into the gap in left field in the seventh inning. By then, the 365 team had a productive fifth inning with the first two batters reaching base before their first baseman hit a one-out home run over the left field fence to make the score 3-0.
Cubs pitching and some keen fielding, namely a couple of timely double plays, kept Baseball 365 scoreless after that. In the bottom of the eighth, JT Canakes singled and moved to second on Orlando Rios’s walk. Patrick Fontaine drove in Canakes for the Cubs’ first run before the inning ended.
In the bottom of the ninth, Walker Rogers started things off with a single to left-center. Pinch designated hitter Arniel Rivera reached base on a 365 error, allowing Walker to score and Rivera to advance to third. Griff Wurtz brought Rivera home with a deep drive to left and the Cubs tied the game at 3-3 at the end of nine innings.
Mac Born is a tenured and talented shortstop who had a stellar college career at Wisconsin–La Crosse. At the end of 2025, he held the career record for hits in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Born came in to pitch late in the game for the Cubs. Baseball 365 had a productive top of the 11th inning. A walk, a stolen base, another hit, a batter hit by a pitch and a deep single to left scored three runs for Baseball 365, giving them the 6-3 win over the Cubs.
Baseball 365 scored six runs on 12 hits with three errors, while Chaska had three runs on six hits with two errors.
“It was a good early-season outing for us,” said Cubs manager Bob Poppitz. “Solid pitching, coming back to tie things up — these guys never give up. It was a good game.”
Team captain Wurtz shared the coach’s summary of the game. “We don’t have our full squad yet. Some of the younger guys are still playing with their school teams, but we kept pace with an always-tough team. This was a good test for us. Lots of good things happened today.”
The Cubs travel to Minnetonka for a game on Thursday and head to St. Peter on Friday. The Cubs return home Sunday at 2 p.m. against Le Sueur.
