WINSTON-SALEM — The scouting report on Davie County’s baseball team is that you can’t — you just can’t — let Andrew Daywalt beat you.
But everyone’s not paying attention, because somehow, some way Daywalt just keeps right on beating people.
Daywalt’s latest victim was Mount Tabor, the one team that absolutely should know better. Daywalt’s walk-off homer beat the Spartans in the Central Piedmont Conference tourney finals last year. This time he got them 6-5, hitting the tie-breaking two-run homer in the sixth inning that put Davie (17-4, 3-2) ahead to stay. Then the junior added insult to injury by nailing down the last four outs on the mound. Daywalt lifted Davie back into the fight for first place in the 4A Central Piedmont Conference and for one of the league’s two state playoff berths.
“This was the biggest game of our season,” said Daywalt, who’s father, George, coached the Mocksville Legion team for many years. “We felt like we had to do something to get in the playoffs. This helps us out a whole lot.”
Daywalt’s not kidding.
Most 17-4 teams are hanging out by the pool relaxing as the regular season heads into its final week. But Davie can’t do that. The War Eagles (4-2 CPC), who lost to Mount Tabor in Mocksville and dropped a conference game Wednesday at West Forsyth, would have been in serious trouble if they’d absorbed CPC loss No. 3.
But now Davie, Mount Tabor and West Forsyth have two CPC losses apiece. Fourth-place South Rowan’s still not out of it, either. The Raiders (3-3 CPC) get another crack at Davie next Tuesday in Landis and battle Mount Tabor on Friday.
Davie looked like a well-oiled machine in winning the recent Cliff Peeler Baseball Classic at Newman Park, but it’s coughed and sputtered a bit since then. It took luck for the War Eagles to survive Friday’s thriller.
Luck came in the form of a bad finger on the hand of Tabor’s ace pitcher Brian Bach, who beat the War Eagles in Mocksville. Bach, who’s bound for Wake Forest, couldn’t pitch, and Davie rapped his replacement, David Stroup, for 10 base knocks.
More good fortune arrived in the form of coach Mike Herndon’s lucky game-day haircut, a Parris Island-looking buzz cropped even closer than the CPC race.
“Good thing I didn’t have any hair today,” joked Herndon. “I would have pulled it all out.
It took up-and-down-the-lineup heroics, too. Daywalt was Daywalt, but key contributions also came from shortstop Ricky Bentley, who had hits in three rallies, and never-rattled starting pitcher Travis Allen who battled for his eighth straight win without his best stuff. Then there was Andruw Jones, who hopped off the bench at Herndon’s request and stroked a two-run, pinch-hit double.
Davie had to hit because Mount Tabor (3-2 CPC)didn’t donate a thing. Coach Trey Massey’s Spartans made no errors and the only walk Davie got was an intentional pass to Daywalt in the seventh.
It was a 1-1 pitcher’s duel until the sixth when Daywalt drove an outside pitch over the netting hanging above the right-field wall with Bentley aboard.
Andrew Frank, who used to play on the same AAU team as East Rowan’s Cal Hayes Jr. and Drew Davis, and North Rowan’s Phillip Goodman, cracked a homer off Allen to cut the Davie lead to 3-2 in the bottom of the sixth.
In the top of the seventh, Bentley doubled home a run for 4-2. Then after Massey ordered an intentional pass of Daywalt, Herndon countered with something he’s never done.
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