East's Mason Phelps. Curt Fowler photo.

 

Staff report

GRANITE QUARRY — Fans flocked to Staton Field on Friday expecting to see a great ball game.

They got to see two of them, basically a doubleheader, 14 innings of tense, fourth-round playoff baseball. Fifth-seeded North Lincoln, the young men from Pumpkin Center, scored four runs in the top of the 14th and beat top-seeded defending state champ East Rowan 9-5.

The NCHSAA record book reveals the longest game the organization has recorded was a 19-inning affair between Barlett Yancey and Graham in 1970. Lake Norman played an 18-inning game with Alexander Central in 2015.

As far as the longest playoff game, that’s not a category the NCHSAA keeps track of, but 14 innings is probably right up there.

North Lincoln (19-8) moves on to play No. 7 North Davidson in the best-of-three championship series of the 3A West bracket.

East (25-6) didn’t score after the sixth inning.

North Lincoln out-hit the Mustangs 17-11, so East was somewhat fortunate to hang in as long as it did. Besides those 17 hits, North Lincoln sent a number of drives to the warning track.

East turned three double plays. That was helpful as far as avoiding a disastrous inning.

East had two pitchers — starter Harrison Ailshie and reliever Mason Phelps — reach the pitch-count limit in the same game. That can’t have happened very often anywhere on the planet, but Phelps, who relieved in the sixth was still out there chucking in the 14th. Julian Cauble relieved Phelps in the 14th and got the third out after the damage had been done with a flurry of two-out hits. Beckett Rinkus delivered the double that broke the 5-all deadlock.

Phelps took one of the toughest losses of all-time. He was on the verge of winning the game in the seventh, was one out away, but North Lincoln tied the game at 5-all when a pitch got away with a runner at third base.

Phelps put up zeroes from the eighth inning through the 13th, but East couldn’t manufacture the run that would have made him a winner.

East batters struck out 13 times. That made it hard to get anything going.

The winning pitcher was Cason McGinnis, who followed ace Kellen Karr and Brady Rinkus, who pitched the sixth through the 10th, to the bump.

Chad Matthews had four hits for North Lincoln.

East got two hits from Phelps, Ailshie, Krys Hernandez and Keaton Walker.

North Lincoln scored in the first on a two-out triple by Tucker Sigmon. East tied it in the bottom half when Ailshie doubled, moved to third on a wild pitch and scored on Phelps’ groundout.

North Lincoln got three straight hits from the bottom of the lineup in the second and scored twice for a 3-1 lead.

Phelps singled in courtesy runner Will Klingler, who slid home with some fire, to cut East’s deficit to 3-2 in the third.

North Lincoln pushed it back to 4-2 in the fourth when Bryson Sumney doubled, advanced to third on a bunt and scored on a sac fly by Greyson Evans.

East tied it at 4-all in the fifth on RBIs by Ailshie and Zeke Stewart. Stewart got the tying run home with a bunt.

Ailshie’s pitching night ended with two outs in the sixth. Phelps took over and got the third out of the inning on a line drive.

When Walker scored on a wild pitch in the bottom of the sixth, the Mustangs led for the first time at 5-4.

East cut one runner down on a close play at the plate in the seventh, but North Lincoln stayed alive when that two-out pitch got away, and then a marathon of historic proportions ensued.