GRANITE FALLS — He should have been the most nervous person in Deal Stadium,
but 15 minutes before he was supposed to pitch the biggest game of his life for
the Kannapolis American Legion team on Monday afternoon, redheaded Andrew Petty
was romping around in tennis shoes like a 4-year-old who had just been dropped
off at the daycare center.
Petty’s smooth, smiling face displayed a few
million freckles, but no fear. The kid looked more concerned about that upcoming
trip to the store to buy his first razor blades than about pitching to a
Whiteville team that was 23-11.
“Nervous?” grinned Petty, a rising junior at A.L.
Brown High who is an occasional shortstop, occasional pitcher and frequent sub
for the Kannapolis team. “No reason for that. We’re just a bunch of kids
playing ball and having fun.”
Petty gave startling Kannapolis yet another day of
playing ball and having fun. He wasn’t around at the end, but he was the main
reason his team beat Whiteville 3-2 in a state tournament losers bracket game
that sets up another Kannapolis- Rowan County battle today at 4 p.m. The winner
of Kannapolis-Rowan Part 7 keeps playing “Survivor” and goes at it again in
a 7 p.m. contest tonight against Cherryville.
Both Area III reps, Rowan (30-12) and Kannapolis
(24-18), have reached the state’s final four, along with Cherryville (33-10)
and host Caldwell County (34-8), the only unbeaten in the double-elimination
extravaganza.
Kannapolis third baseman Nate Amerson, for one, was
happy to see Rowan, which knocked out Wilmington 5-4, live to play another day.
“We’re glad Rowan won,” he said. “We’ve hung out with them at the same
hotel this week, played video games with them, bonded pretty good with them. We
pulled for them to win and we know they pulled for us to win.”
But Gameboy friendships will be set aside this
afternoon. Someone calls it a season.
Kannapolis looked like a team ready to pack it up
for most of Monday. It appeared exhausted during eight innings worth of weak
swings against the offerings of Whiteville pitcher Jason Mills.
But even with Kannapolis not making a peep with the
bats, Petty and his cut fastball kept his team in the game — to the surprise
of perhaps everyone except the easy-going Petty himself. Petty breezed along
without a care in the world — like he was throwing wiffle balls past his kid
brother in the backyard.
“I heard they were a real good fastball-hitting
team,” said Petty. “So I threw ‘em maybe two straight fastballs all day.”
Kannapolis scored first on an unearned run in the
sixth. Bobby Helms singled, stole second, then came around when Dusty
Carmichael grounded out and Whiteville first baseman Josh Stanley threw wildly
across the diamond in an attempt to get Helms at third.
Petty carried that fragile 1-0 lead into the eighth,
when he was finally lifted by coach Joe Hubbard in favor of Helms, Kannapolis’
ace, after a couple of one-out singles.
“Part of me wanted to stay out there. Part of me
said that I don’t wanna be the one that loses this game for the team,” said
Petty.
Whiteville got both baserunners home against Helms.
One run scored on a chopper on which Amerson made a great diving stop, but threw
wide of first. A wild pitch put Whiteville on top 2-1, as the crowd fell silent.
That’s how it stayed until the last of the ninth.
Carmichael opened the inning by taking five pitches. With the count full, he
blistered a single to center for Kannapolis’ fourth hit of the day. Ryan Craft
followed with a bunt in front of the mound. His speed beat the throw to first to
put two on.
Next was Amerson, who punched a 3-1 pitch between
third and the mound. Whiteville had no play and the bases were full with no
outs.
“Those are just two sacrifice bunts,” said
Hubbard. “But the kids made them so perfect that they beat them out.”
“We work on bunting a lot in practice,” laughed
Amerson, “even though we don’t like it much. Today it paid off. My teammates
got on me, saying I missed the bunt sign about four times, but, hey, I had to
take a strike.”
The tension mounted as Whiteville got a huge first
out, getting a force at the plate on Steve Swann’s grounder to third. But then
youngster Chris Florence slapped a soft single to score Craft, tying the game at
2-2.
After Jonathan Goodman bounced into another force at
home for the second out, it was up to Zack Gurley. It had been a truly awful day
for Gurley. He stepped in 0-for-4, had been smacked in the throat by a 55-foot
Petty pitch in the third and had been unable to block the skidding Helms
delivery that had reached the screen and put Whiteville ahead in the eighth.
But all’s well that ends well. Gurley got just
enough of a 1-1 pitch to dump it safely into left field. His clutch blow plated
a dancing Swann with the game-winner.
“There was no pressure,” said Gurley, “because
we either win or go extra innings. I had a feeling. We’ve done this a ton of
times. We’re Kannapolis, aren’t we?”
They are indeed. And this was their fourth
ninth-inning rally in just the past two weeks. When you’ve come from six down
to win in the ninth, a one-run deficit is hardly cause for panic.
“Coach said the same thing he always says,”
shrugged Amerson. “You know, ‘It’s do or die. We win or we go home.’ We
just made it happen one more time.”
“Petty did a great job and the kids believed,”
said Hubbard. “I thought our guys played big. One run down or five runs, they
always know they can get it done. We’ve got a pretty good ball team.”
And no matter what happens today, Kannapolis has
proven that fact to the world a hundred times over.
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