The Midvalley Merchants won the Gallatin Valley Rec League championship Thursday night at the Four Corners Complex, beating the Belgrade Bandits 7-6 in eight innings on a walk-off single by third baseman Dale Henderer.

The game lasted two hours and forty minutes. Nobody complained about the length.

“The line held when it had to,” said Merchants player-coach Buck Pendleton, wiping infield dust from his forearms. “That’s the whole game right there. You hold the line, good things happen.”

Pendleton, who runs Pendleton Fencing out of Belgrade and has played in this league since the games were on a dirt diamond behind the old fairgrounds, said the new complex still feels strange. The lights are too bright. The scoreboard updates in real time. There is a concession stand that takes Apple Pay.

“Used to be you brought your own cooler and nobody said a word,” Pendleton said. “Now there’s a sign about outside beverages. I just want to play ball.”

The Bandits took a 6-4 lead in the top of the seventh on a two-run double by Jake Vogl, who works at the Yellowstone Club but lives in a rental off North 19th. He said the drive to Four Corners takes twenty minutes now. Used to take ten.

“Traffic’s the worst part,” Vogl said. “But the field’s nice. Can’t argue with the field.”

Merchants shortstop Troy Abernathy, an MSU junior from Billings who plans to stay after graduation, turned the double play that ended the Bandits’ half of the eighth. He said the infield dirt plays true.

“Good hop,” Abernathy said. “You read it, you make the play. Simple.”

Henderer’s single scored courtesy runner Marty Griggs from second. Griggs, forty-two, replaced starting catcher Pete Dunbar, who cramped up rounding third. The league allows courtesy runners for anyone over forty or anyone who asks nicely.

The Merchants dogpiled near second base. Someone produced a case of Macrobrew from a cooler in the parking lot. The Bandits stayed to shake hands.

The complex sits where the Houghton place ran cattle until 2021. The old barn stood near where the scoreboard now flashes final scores in LED.

Pendleton stood by the dugout after, watching the lights shut down one bank at a time. He said the fencing job at the complex was bid too low. The posts are already leaning.

“We’ll fix it next spring,” he said. “Line won’t hold forever, but it held tonight.”