KANNAPOLIS — Piedmont manager Greg Legg would have gladly settled for a run. Instead,
he got six in a matter of minutes as the first-place Boll Weevils whipped Charleston
(S.C.) 7-2 in South Atlantic League baseball on Sunday afternoon.“It looked like one of those games where the team that scored
first was going to get it,” said Legg, who watched his starting pitcher, Adam Walker,
match zeroes with RiverDog right-hander Pat Hertzel into the fifth inning.
But in the last of the fifth, the dam broke at Fieldcrest
Cannon Stadium, and everything flowed in the direction of the Weevils (21-9), who are
playing .700 baseball for the year and have won seven of their last eight games.
Shomari Beverly and Jamie Deitrick, the bottom two guys in
the lineup, got things started with one-out singles. Jay Sitzman’s RBI single put the
Weevils on the board and Julio Collazo made it 2-0 with a line drive sacrifice fly to
center on which the RiverDogs’ 18-year-old millionaire Josh Hamilton made a
sensational catch.
After Marlon Byrd kept the inning going with a single,
red-hot Nate Espy drove a pitch out of the park, just to the left of dead-center.
“Nate keeps swinging well, he’s been hot all year
long,” said Legg. “That shot set the tone for the game.”
Espy, now hitting .374 with six homers and 22 RBIs,
certainly set the tone for the next at-bat, anyway. Jorge Padilla made it back-to-back
homers for the Weevils. Padilla’s second blast of the year made it 6-0.
They had to play the rest of the game, but it was over.
Walker wasn’t as good as he can be, but there was no way the Dogs (14-16) were going
to bite him for six runs. The left-hander lowered his ERA to 1.38 and upped his record to
4-1. He’s the first Weevil hurler to win four times this season.
Walker, who scattered nine hits and helped himself with an
early pickoff of a runner at second, was touched for a run in the seventh to spoil the
shutout, then called it a day. Elio Serrano and Chris Keelin finished things off without
any undue excitement.
The last thrill of the day was provided by Byrd, who picked
up the Weevils’ third homer of the day on his third hit of the day. Byrd didn’t
have a great swing at a seventh-inning pitch from Jesse Cornejo, but still was strong
enough to power it over the left-field wall for his fourth homer of the year.
“It was just another good overall game for us,”
said Legg, after his team rapped out 12 hits and made a single error. “Now we’ve
got a chance to sweep a pretty good ballclub.”
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