MUSKEGON – What a difference a rainout day makes.

On Tuesday the Muskegon Clippers opened their season with an ugly loss in a game that had far more than its share of errors, walks and hit batters.

On Wednesday the Clippers were rained out, and the day off might have turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

They bounced back with a 4-1 win over Jet Box in the opener of a doubleheader at Marsh Field on Thursday, then put up a good fight in the nightcap but ended up falling 6-5 in extra innings.

The Clippers are now 1-2 on the season and will continue their season-opening homestand on Friday with a start of a three-game series against the Royal Oak Leprechauns. Game time is 7 p.m.

“It was good to have clean games for the most part,” said Clippers manager Logan Fleener. “We got great start from (pitcher) Mason Hill in Game 1. That is what we had planned, and they (Hill combined with reliever Ethan Houghtaling) gave us a full staff for the second game.”

The Clippers opened the scoring in the first inning of Game 1 with an RBI single by Logan Todd.

Jet Box tied the game in the third with a home run from Jacob Rybicki, but the Clippers quickly responded with an RBI single from August Hutchison to take a 2-1 lead after three innings.

The Clippers closed out the scoring with a two-run double by Colin Cornwell.

Hill earned the win in the opener, pitching five innings and allowing one run on two hits while striking out seven. Houghtaling tossed the save for the Clippers.

Hutchison finished with three hits and an RBI while Cornwell added two hits and two RBIs.

In Game 2, Muskegon erased an early four-run deficit and took a 5-4 lead in the sixth inning on an RBI single by Jacob Anderson.

Jet Box was down to its final strike in the seventh (the last scheduled inning on doubleheader days) when Ian Cleary tied the game with an RBI single.

The was no scoring in the eighth inning, although the Clippers came close to winning when they loaded the bases with one out, but the uprising ended with two strikeouts.

Under a new league rule, teams that are tied play one full extra inning, and if they remain tied play one more half inning. The home team decides whether to play offense or defense. If the offensive team scores, it wins. If it fails to score, the defensive team wins.

The Clippers opted to play defense in the sudden-death ninth, which automatically put a Jet Box runner on first base with nobody out.

The strategy backfired when Dominic VanDoorne hit a game-winning double with one out to secure the 6-5 victory for Jet Box.

“With the sudden death games it is going to take a while to figure out what side is the best side to be on,” Fleener said. “We lost a lot of momentum with those two strikeouts in the end with the bases loaded.

“I felt it was the wrong choice to send the offense back up. I took a chance and today it wasn’t the right choice.”