BY MIKE LONDON
SALISBURY POST

LANDIS — West Rowan’s 11-7 baseball win over South Rowan on Wednesday afternoon featured back-to-back homers by Falcons Ben Hampton and Patrick Adams and came reasonably close to featuring back-to-back coaching ejections.

South coach Linn Williams walked the plank in the top of third as he made a pitching change. Williams got the heave-ho from the plate ump when he took up for his starting pitcher Mike Davis, who’d been hurt by a smallish strike zone.

Assistant coach Thad Chrismon guided the Raiders the rest of the way. Williams wasn’t sure if his ouster will be classified as a simple “disqualification” or an “ejection” that will force him to sit out Friday’s game with East.

West coach Chris Cauble, meanwhile, survived an animated conversation with the base umpire following a balk call in the bottom of the fourth. Cauble, if you can follow this, wasn’t objecting to the balk call so much as he was objecting to the base arbiter’s objection that he left the dugout at a jog rather than a walk. No kidding.

At any rate, one point no one could argue was that West (3-0) was impressive, especially for a team that had a sophomore (Adams) starter on the mound and a flock of kids around the infield. The anchor was soph shortstop Bryan Graham, who was nothing short of phenomenal.

“Graham played like a senior,” said Cauble.

“Graham’s one of the best shortstops I’ve seen,” added West senior Matt Morgan. “Some of the stuff Bryan does won’t make the boxscore, but he saves runs. He knocks down everything.”

Speaking of knocking things down, that’s pretty much what West’s hitters did to the fences at the South field. The Falcons, who’d had only 10 hits in their first two games combined, pounded out 15 hits off three Raider hurlers.

“I can’t remember one of my teams getting 15 hits,” said Cauble. “I was very pleased with the way we swung the bats.”

Cauble was especially pleased with the work of the lefty-swinging Morgan, who had four hits. Morgan came into the contest 1-for-7, but smacked the ball all over — a bunt single, a line single up the middle, a double to the opposite field and a triple to the right-center gap.

“Coach has been on us pretty good about staying back and going with the pitch,” said Morgan. “Today we did that.”

“Morgan was that senior leader we’ve been looking for him to be,” praised Cauble.

The key to the game was likely South’s failure to get to Adams in the first two innings. The Raiders (1-2) loaded the bases in both frames thanks to five walks — the zone was tight for Adams, too — and a hit batsman, but got only one run.

“We score early and we put pressure on West,” said Williams. “But we didn’t take advantage of opportunities. Then we gave West an opportunity in the third and they got four runs.”

Davis issued bases-loaded walks to Hampton and Adams in the third. Two tight ball calls on Adams’ at-bat worked South fans into a lather.

Then Davis had to lay in pitches to Seth Waller and Ryan Wilson that were raked for run-scoring singles and a 5-1 West lead. That sequence got Davis — and an exasperated Williams — out of the game.

It was an 8-1 Falcon laugher after Hampton and Adams belted bombs off Adam Earnhardt, but South spent the rest of the day chipping away against West reliever Daniel Cauble, who spelled Adams in the fourth.

Keith Clark and hot William Van Wieren (seven RBIs in two days) knocked in South runs in the sixth to make it 9-4.

The Raiders then pieced together three more in the seventh.

The last two outs were exciting. With the bases full, Van Wieren drove one to right-center that a racing Brandon Hiatt and Morgan nearly collided on. But Morgan reeled it in.

“It was pretty close,” said Morgan. “Brandon tried to back off, but he nicked me a little bit.”

The final out came when Derrick Morrison scalded a missile directly into the glove of third baseman Waller.

“That goes through and we’ve got the tying run up there,” said Williams. “We battled back all day, but we were fighting uphill.”

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NOTES:Daniel Cauble was credited with the win despite an ugly pitching line. ... Stephen Ashby came off the West bench for two hits. ... Patrick Atwell scored three Raider runs and Justin Pinyan stayed warm with three more hits.

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Contact Mike London at 704-797-4259 or mlondon@salisburypost.com .