BY STEVE HANF
SALISBURY POST

GRANITEFALLS— Kannapolis, the king of comebacks, found itself on the wrong side of one Saturday night.

Caldwell County spotted Kannapolis four runs, then scored the next nine for a 9-5 win in the American Legion Baseball State Championship Tournament in front of 2,500 fans at M.S. Deal Stadium.

“They battled. They continued to play,”Kannapolis head coach Joe Hubbard said. “We had a 4-0 lead and they didn’t quit.”

He knows all about that. Kannapolis rallied its way to the state tournament time and again, and Hubbard’s team beat Wayne County 7-6 in Friday’s opener with four runs in the eighth inning.

“We knew they’d been doing that to other people,” Caldwell County head coach Gary Hamby said.

But those other teams didn’t have Drew Lindley. After Kannapolis struck for four quick runs off two of Caldwell’s top pitchers, Lindley entered in the fourth, escaped a bases-loaded jam and kept his team in the game.

When Caldwell County came through with six runs in the seventh and eighth innings, Lindley had pitched his team deeper into the winners bracket. Caldwell (33-8) will play Monday night at 7 against either Rowan County or Cherryville. Kannapolis fell into a Monday loser’s bracket game at 1.

Kannapolis’ fast start Saturday came despite a long delay. The day’s schedule unraveled after the first game, when Cherryville and Whiteville went into the 11th inning tied at 8-all before Cherryville scored eight runs en route to a 16-9 win.

Saturday’s second game went to Wayne County, which needed more than three hours for its 12-10 losers bracket win over Hickory. That left Kannapolis starting 2 hours, 16 minutes late.

“It was difficult for both teams,”Hamby said. “We didn’t seem ready to play; it was like we were in slow motion for the first few innings.”

Caldwell County starter Cody Wilkins struggled finding the plate when he finally took the mound. He threw seven straight balls to open the first, and Chris Florence turned a walk into a run on Chad Tuttle’s double to right-center field.

Kannapolis continued to hit Wilkins, a Notre Dame signee. Tuttle singled and Bobby Helms reached on an error in the third inning, which set up Dusty Carmichael’s triple to make it 3-0 and chase Wilkins.

Chris Bentley allowed the fourth run to score in the fourth inning when he loaded the bases. Helms connected for a sac fly off Lindley, beginning a long string of outs. Caldwell’s last reliever retired 11 of 12 batters from the fifth through eighth innings.

“They’ve done the job all year long, and for whatever reason they both struggled some tonight,”Hamby said of Wilkins and Bentley. “Once Drew went out and did the job of shutting them down, it picked our team up. We regained our confidence from that and began to concentrate and rally behind Drew’s efforts.”

Lindley even got the offense started. Kannapolis starter Justin Bonds didn’t allow a hit through the first three innings, and Lindley’s single to open the fourth was the first ball to reach the outfield. Travis Bentley reached on a fielder’s choice and Lindley scored on an errant pickoff throw, but the run was earned — Daniel Shomate followed with a deep two-run blast over the left-field fence to cut the lead to 4-3.

Bonds settled down until the seventh, when a Josh Day single tied the game at 4-all. Adam Russell came on in relief and surrendered two singles, including Bentley’s go-ahead liner, and reliever Nick Cadolino gave up a two-run double to Nathan Chandler to put Caldwell up 7-4.

Two insurance runs in the eighth, on a wild pitch and groundout, gave Caldwell a five-run cushion. And that was plenty for Lindley, who allowed a sac fly to Helms in the ninth, but otherwise shut down the comeback kids.

“We had a lot of opportunities early,”said Hubbard, whose team stranded eight in the first four innings, six of those in scoring position. “We took advantage of a couple but squandered a couple more, then they came back with the big three spot and it seems like the momentum shifted.”

Thanks primarily to Lindley.

“We definitely were fortunate, but we owe a lot of that to Drew,” Hamby said. “Drew came in and shut them down. We could’ve been further down.”

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NOTES: In addition to allowing only four hits, Lindley’s control was perfect. He didn’t walk a batter. … Six batters were hit by pitches, three on each side. … Kannapolis’ Ryan Craft lifted a foul ball out of play in the third inning that took one bounce and entered the men’s bathroom, drawing plenty of laughs from the crowd.