BY DAVID SHAW
SALISBURY POST

KANNAPOLIS — It’s time to flick the lights on and off in K-Town. The party is officially over for Post 501.

Kannapolis ended its swing-and-a-miss postseason Thursday night when it suffered a 7-2 loss to visiting Concord in the first round of the American Legion playoffs.

“That’s the funny thing about baseball,” coach Joe Hubbard said after third-seeded Kannapolis was eliminated in five games. “The team that’s supposed to win doesn’t always win. That’s why you play the games.”

Only problem was, Kannapolis (11-11) didn’t play them all that well. After capturing Game 1 on Sunday, it dropped four consecutive matches and was outscored 28-14.

“You can’t expect anything when you play like we did,” third baseman Chad Tuttle decided. “We didn’t show our best in this series. We’re better than this.”

Hubbard had to agree. “I can’t really explain it,” he said. “Basically, we just did not play the way we’re capable of playing. We didn’t hit in the clutch, we made mistakes in the field, we did some things this series that we hadn’t done all year long. I’m not saying we didn’t play hard. It just didn’t click for us.”

It did for sixth-seeded Concord (12-12), which opens a best-of-seven, second-round series against South Rowan at Webb Field Monday night. Behind uzi-armed pitcher Brian York, the visitors left little to the imagination.

“We showed them what we are,” York said after pitching a tidy five-hitter and collecting 16 strikeouts. “Showed them we’re not gonna be underdogs. When the time came to get it done, we did all the little things. We did everything we had to do and did it at exactly the right time.”

For York, a tall right-hander headed for UNC-Charlotte in the fall, that time arrived sometime during the bottom of the first inning. Kannapolis jump-started its offense, kicking off the frame with four straight hits and taking a 2-0 lead on Josh McKnight’s RBI-single and Craig Waller’s run-scoring groundout.

“That embarrassed him,” said winning coach Josh Stamey. “He has the respect of everyone in our league. That’s not what he wanted to do.”

York (5-1) reported his fastball was coming in too flat and his curve was breaking in the dirt. “I had to come over the top a little more,” he said.

So he tinkered with the engine without making any major adjustments. He allowed only one hit — a leadoff Texas League double by Matt Harris in the fifth — over the final eight innings.

“We should have scored more than two runs in the first inning,” Hubbard lamented. “We should have scored five or six. Because after that Brian York pitched a Brian York game. He’s so tough once he settles in.”

Concord tied the score 2-2 in the second inning when 14-year old infielder Chris Taylor punched a two-run single to right against Kannapolis starter Zach Ward. In the third the guests added three more runs — the first when Jeff Kirkpatrick was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, and another two when Taylor’s line-drive double found the right-centerfield gap.

It stayed that way until the seventh, when Concord scored the game’s final two runs on an error and a wild pitch.

Stamey admitted feeling jittery before the game, indicating he “just wanted to get it over with.” Afterward, he reflected on his team’s upset series triumph.

“I didn’t think we couldn’t do it. I was just trying to figure out how to get them to do it,” he said. “I’ve played in series when we were up 3-1. You don’t want to blow that. There’s pressure. But I’m proud of our guys. After that first-game loss, we really grew up a lot.”

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NOTES: The start of the game was delayed 55 minutes due to a rainstorm. ... Leadoff hitter Matt Harris had two of the five Kannapolis hits. ... Ward permitted only five hits in 623 innings but struggled with his control. He hit four batters, walked four others and uncorked three wild pitches. ... The bottom five hitters in the Kannapolis batting order combined to go 0-for-17 with 11 strikeouts.