GARNER— At the crack of the bat, the game was tied.
Then, as the ball died in front of the 365-foot sign and the left fielder closed his glove around it, the game was over.
Rowan County’s opening contest in the American Legion Baseball State Tournament ended cruelly. So tantalizingly close to new life, the team instead had to settle for a 5-2 defeat to Wilmington and a trip into the tournament’s losers bracket.
Rowan played an elimination game at 10 this morning against Rutherford County.
“I was holding my breath there at the end,”Wilmington head coach Keith Moore said. “Luckily it stayed in there.”
Rowan (35-8) hung in there for nine innings Thursday against the state’s top team. Wilmington took its three-run lead into the ninth, but watched an error and single bring the tying run to the plate.
Third baseman Bobby Parnell took a mighty cut at the first pitch he saw from Wilmington star hurler Darryl Lawhorn. He sent the high fastball on a line way back to left, but just as quickly as the ball appeared to be gone, Asaad Yeoman backpedaled to the fence and caught it effortlessly.
“I thought it was gone as soon as he hit it,”Rowan catcher Drew Davis said. “He hit it to the worst possible spot — the ball was carrying to right field and it went to left-center. If we’re playing at home it’s a tie ballgame.”
But Garner High School’s Trojan Park is deeper to the power alleys than Rowan’s Newman Park.
Lawhorn didn’t mind the field’s dimensions a bit. The deep fences kept his last pitch in the park, but couldn’t contain two shots off his bat. Lawhorn’s home runs in the first and eighth innings — both toward right field — accounted for three of Wilmington’s runs.
Those two pitches were the only big mistakes Rowan starter Julian Sides made against Post 10 (33-2).
After Lawhorn’s first-inning homer, Wilmington collected back-to-back base hits to push a second run across. Sides stayed out of trouble again until Lawhorn’s blast in the eighth, allowing only an unearned run over the middle innings.
“He definitely pitched well enough to win,”Davis said. “He pitched an excellent game against a good team.”
Lawhorn was perfect over the first three innings before Rowan finally chipped away at the 2-0 lead.
With two outs in the sixth inning, Cal Hayes Jr. drew a walk and stole second base. When he raced into third a few pitches later, the throw from catcher Jimmy Cushing bounced in front of the bag and into left field. Hayes scrambled to his feet and scored without a throw to make it 2-1.
Wilmington answered immediately when Lawhorn singled to center. When Nick Lefko glanced up briefly to survey the situation, the ball rolled past him to the fence, putting the leadoff man at third with no outs. He later scored on a sac fly.
Rowan trimmed the margin to one run in the top of the eighth when Parnell grounded to deep short and beat the throw to the bag. After No. 9 hitter Cory Ruff drew a walk, head coach Jim Gantt had to make the tough call — bunt the runners over with Hayes, the team’s top hitter.
Hayes got the bunt down and Davis’ sac fly made it 3-2, but that was all Lawhorn allowed.
“The toughest thing about it is we didn’t support Julian,”Gantt said. “I hate it that Julian got the loss there.”
Rowan picked up just four hits all game despite making solid contact against Lawhorn. The Wilmington hurler struck out just five batters and walked three.
“We hit the ball all game. We just hit it right at somebody,”Davis said.
Rowan will hope for better luck in the morning. The team headed back to its hotel for an early wake-up call leading up to a pressure-packed elimination game.
“I can’t say I’m looking forward to it,”Davis said. “But we’ve got to win.”
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