LANDIS — Hold those eulogies.
Reports of South Rowan’s demise as an American Legion baseball team may be premature after all.
Post 185/146 — which, at times, has played like a team on Death Row this spring — regained its pulse Tuesday night when it rallied for a 12-9 non-league victory over visiting Statesville.
“Every win’s important when you’ve been struggling the way we have,” coach Allen Wilson said. “We’ve been getting leads and blowing leads. This time we held on and that’s always a big boost.”
South (4-11 overall) followed a similar script against Statesville (3-15). The locals built an 8-2 advantage against starting pitcher Charles Taylor and were coasting behind 15-year old right-hander Adam Earnhardt. Then disaster struck in the top of the sixth inning.
“We fell apart that one inning,” explained catcher Justin Pinyan. “(Earnhardt) started leaving the ball up and they were catching up with it. He really didn’t pitch that bad. He just left it over the plate too much.”
Statesville pounced on Earnhardt for seven runs — five of them earned — and grabbed a 9-8 lead. He was relieved by southpaw Nick Mayle amid a rainstorm of line drives.
“For five or six innings Adam was around the plate and just off the plate,” said Wilson. “Not to compare him with one of the greatest pitchers in baseball, but he was kind of like Maddux. He was just missing. He got a lot of groundballs and got them to chase pitches. But by the sixth inning he was up to about 88 or 90 pitches and he just ran out of juice.”
His teammates, on the other hand, did not. South responded with three runs in the last of the sixth and reclaimed the lead, 11-9. Two runs scored on Raymondo Brady’s smash through the legs of third-baseman Nolan Thomas and a third when Pinyan served a base hit into left field. South added an insurance run when Ronnie Shore scored on a seventh-inning wild pitch.
Winning pitcher Mayle (1-2) and fellow relievers Michael Davis and Tim Cook permitted four Statesville hits but no runs over the final 323 innings.
“These guys never fold or quit and that makes them fun to watch,” said Wilson. “At times this year — defensively, on the mound, maybe even at the plate — we’ve found ways to lose. Tonight we found a way to win.”
South (1-8) remains last in the league standings with five games to play. Wilson, ever the optimist, feels his team can win three or four of those, finish near the middle of the pack and get a favorable seed in the postseason tournament.
“This may sound as silly as anything you’ve ever heard,” he said. “But no, I don’t think that’s asking too much.”
Fair enough. But keep the paramedics close at hand.
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NOTES: Nine of South’s runs were scored with two outs. “That’s big,” said Shore. “That’s what this team has been lacking all year — guys who step up and get it done with two outs.” ... Statesville committed six of the game’s 10 errors and allowed eight unearned runs. ... Pinyan went 3-for-4 with a pair of doubles.
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