By John RittenhouseThe Luverne baseball team dug an early hole it couldn’t climb out of during Tuesday’s opening game of the season in Tracy.Tracy-Milroy-Balaton plated single runs in the first three innings of the contest. The way things turned out, that was all the scoring the Panthers would need to prevail as they secured a 4-2 win over the Cards.Luverne did score single runs in the fifth and sixth innings, but T-M-B answered with a run in the bottom of the fifth to win by two."We had a couple of mental mistakes that cost us," said LHS coach Mike Wenninger.Luverne scored its first run of the year when Jake Clark walked and scored on a single from Derek Elbers to make it a 3-1 game in the fifth.After T-M-B answered with a counter in the bottom of the fifth, Marc Boelman belted a homer for the Cards to cap the scoring in the sixth.Nathan Boler yielded two runs in two innings and took the pitching loss. Andrew DeBoer was touched for one run in two innings in relief, and Boelman pitched one-run ball for one inning before Caleb Bruynes tossed a scoreless sixth frame.Luverne plays a double-header in Redwood Falls Tuesday.Box score AB R H BIClark 2 1 0 0Lundgren 2 0 0 0Elbers 2 0 1 1Fitzer 2 0 1 1Boelman 3 0 1 1Reisch 1 0 0 0Petersen 1 0 0 0Nath 3 0 1 0Johnson 2 0 0 0Boomgaarden 1 0 0 0DeBoer 3 0 1 0Oeding 2 0 0 0Goembel 1 0 0 0