Myers, clad in shorts and red undershirt, danced around the outfield giving his teammates high-fives after they saved him from a certain South Atlantic League loss. Myers hadn’t been able to keep the ball down and had been rocked by the RiverDogs (14-15) for six runs and 11 hits in a five-inning stint. He left the game with the Weevils (20-9) trailing 6-3.

But somehow, they bailed him out, winning their sixth game in their last seven outings and topping the visiting Dogs in extra innings for the second straight night at Fieldcrest Cannon Stadium.

“Tell Myers he threw garbage up there,” chuckled Star of the Game Brian Hitchcox, making sure the No. 1 draft pick with the 3-1 record and the golden right arm was within earshot. “We picked the weasel up. We got him off the hook.”

It was no walk in the park. Piedmont never could put together a big inning.

“Yeah, but we looked up at the scoreboard and knew there was time.” said Hitchcox. “We started nibbling — one here and one there.”

The pecking away really started in the first. That’s when the Weevils scored two runs on Jorge Padilla’s RBI single and a wild pitch.

Another Weevil run scored in the fourth on Jay Sitzman’s bases-loaded rip to left field. That shot looked to be ticketed for a three-run triple, but Charleston’s Angel Batista turned it into a sacrifice fly with a spinning, leaping grab.

Hitchcox single-handedly made it 6-4 in the sixth, with a line drive that just cleared the right-field wall. “I was lucky, I think it went all of 310 (feet),” said Hitchcox, who claims to weigh 175 pounds. “It happens.”

Piedmont cut the lead to 6-5 in the eighth with some good fortune. Buzz Hannahan’s two-out hopper to short bounded off shortstop Jorge Cantu’s chest, scoring Hitchcox.

“Every time they made a mistake, we capitalized,” said Weevil manager Greg Legg.

Padilla’s RBI groundout tied the game in the last of the ninth. The Weevils should have won it right there, but Russ Jacobson rolled into an inning-ending double play with the bases full.

That set the stage for a crazy 10th. Carlos Acevedo reached second to start the inning when his grounder to third was thrown into the crowd back of first by Juan Salas. Hannahan bunted Acevedo to third. Sitzman was intentionally walked but then Collazo drilled the first pitch he saw from Jose Rodriguez on a line over third to put the Weevils in first place by a half-game over Hickory, an 8-7 loser to Asheville.

“We figured Collazo would come through,” said Hitchcox. “It’s always someone. And right now, it’s whoever happens to be up there. This is a whole lot of fun. We’ve just gotta keep it rolling.”

It was yet another ear-to-ear-grin win for Legg, but he’s trying hard to keep things in perspective.

“Adversity’s gonna come sooner or later,” he said. “But when it does, we’ve just got to stay afloat.”

The guys who really kept Piedmont afloat last night were bullpenners Franklin Perez and Justin Fry. They hurled five hitless relief innings to pick up Myers.

“We told them just to give us a chance and maybe if we kept plugging we’d catch a break,” said Legg. “They did the job.”

Another guy who keeps doing the job is Hitchcox, a lightly regarded 25th-round pick with a modest-sized paycheck, who once figured to be a utility guy. After his 3-for-4 effort last night, he’s batting .344 and looks indispensable.

“We beat a talented bunch of guys,” he said. “They’ve got a couple of No. 1 picks. There’s a lot of money on that team.”

And his look said how much fun it had been to beat them. His look also said how much fun it was to help bail out his own big-bonus buddy.