By Jordan honeycutt
sports@salisburypost.com
TROUTMAN — The South Rowan Legion team started Tuesday night competing in a hotly competitive, league game against Statesville. However, it ended with an array of on-the-field hijinks and competitions having nothing to do with baseball.
South prevailed 4-3 after five innings with a little help from Mother Nature in the form of an impressive lightning display. But the real entertainment occurred during the break.
It started by some South players, led by Spencer Matlock, began turning helmets backwards and lobbing baseball grenades over at the Statesville players, who promptly retaliated, while waiting for the deliberating umpires’ decision.
The lightning kept flashing and pushing the restart back 30 minutes with every bang.
As the delay ensued, so did the fun.
When staging a fake WWII battle became old, the players began showing off their creativity.
They battled in dance-offs, red rover, duck-duck-goose, red light-green light, a jousting competition and each squad showed their own uniqueness.
South players lined up in a civil war type faceoff using bats as guns and a few of Statesville’s guys put a pair of gloves on their ears and ran through the outfield as deer, while others sniped them from atop the dugout.
South’s Matlock, a reserve outfielder and the smallest man on the team, was victorious in the joust.
As for the actual game, South was driven to victory by RBI hits from Dylan Walker, Matt Miller and Parker Hubbard.
Miller went 2-for-3 with a double and single, including one at-bat where he fouled off what seemed like 20 pitches.
South entered the fifth trailing 3-2, but as the clouds darkened, the visitors cranked up the juice and plated two runs, before retiring Statesville, for the one-run advantage.
After numerous accounts of bad bounces or misfortune, South hopes that a reversal of that fortune can slingshot them into a momentum filled homestretch of games.
The first of that stretch of games happens tonight as Suth travels to Mooresville High School to take on the Legends, who are hot themselves, having upset Kannapolis a night ago.