Such a story, this South Rowan baseball team.

For two nights last weekend the Raiders played fantasy baseball — collecting fairy-tale, somebody-pinch-me victories over Statesville and East Rowan in the Cliff Peeler Classic.

No one saw them coming. They were the Marx Brothers in spikes, stealing the silverware while everyone else was enjoying a pre-dinner recital in the other room. The nerve of those boys.

“We were something,” senior Greg Deal said, just moments after accepting the tourney’s co-MVP award. “Maybe now people will look at us in a different way. Maybe they’ll give us a little more credit now that we showed we can play as a team and beat good teams.”

Maybe. Then again, maybe not. South is still a 7-11 team, one that had lost four straight games entering the tournament and one that took a step backward in Monday’s unsightly 6-1 championship-game loss to Davie County.

“We still feel good about Saturday’s game,” Jared Wingler said, recalling the 8-7 stun-job South pinned on favored East in the semifinals. “But the way we played tonight, it almost feels like it was a fluke. That’s what we don’t want people to think.”

Of course some people will think that. South managed only one hit — Justin Pinyan’s infield single in the third inning — against winning pitcher Lonnie Barnes, a right-hander who blended a nothing-special fastball with an average curve and cute little changeup to silence the Raiders.

“I don’t care who is pitching. One hit won’t get it done,” shortstop Ronnie Shore insisted. “Everybody was so ahead of him, swinging off the front foot. Nobody could sit back and drive him.”

Instead the Raiders flailed their bats at Barnes’ off-speed assortment, scoring only an unearned run on Pinyan’s fifth-inning sacrifice fly.

“We came in here wanting to do something special tonight,” the junior catcher explained. “We made it a point to stay intense and do whatever had to be done. We just didn’t get it done.”

Ditto for South’s defense, which at times was downright offensive. The Raiders committed four errors, allowing Davie to score five unearned runs against Wingler, the luckless loser.

“If we had made a couple plays, it’s not a 6-0 ballgame,” said Linn Williams, South’s first-year coach who saw the good side of bad. “We felt it could be 1-1 or 0-0 and we’d still be playing right now.”

Davie (16-3), winner of eight straight games and a contender for the CPC title, quickly squelched South’s hopes by scoring three unearned runs before the sun dropped from the sky.

“We’re not talented enough to just throw our gloves on the field and beat people,” said Wingler. “We have to play with our heads, put our minds to it. Tonight I think we played kind of scared, not with confidence.”

The situation grew darker in the fifth, when Chase Goodale misplayed a ball in right field that put Davie runners at second and third with one out. Travis Allen’s two-run single chased Wingler and reliever Tim Cook was promptly victimized by a twin-killing — two infield errors on the same play.

“We just didn’t look loose tonight,” said Cook, who fanned five batters in less than three innings. “Before the tournament we had a lot to prove. In some ways we did that. We showed what we’re capable of.”

And in other ways, they demonstrated that they’re still South Rowan, a team that’s been a year or two away for a few years now. But give the Raiders this much — they didn’t steal the show but they captured our hearts. For a brief moment they were the ‘69 Mets, the little engine that could — and almost did.

“Maybe we’ll start getting some respect around here,” said Shore. “Those two games we won were big. A championship trophy would have been bigger.”

Such a story, but too bad. They would have made a good-looking Cinderella.