Thursday, May 31, 2012

Seven Run Seventh Good Enough

Baseball is a funny game.  It can be played every day and since Sunday night's opener on the 2012 Legion season Coleman Pitt Post 58 has now played four times in five days.  It is still early in the season and coach Hank Jones has used several lineups giving everyone of the players an opportunity to prove that they can be one of those guys that plays every day. So far Post 58 is hitting an anemic 240 and most of that average has been singles.  After six innings tonight the average had dropped well below 240.

Post 102 throughout the history of Legion ball has been an automatic win for Post 58.  You have to go all the way back to 1962 and 1963 when Ahoskie took  the season series and every so often a 102 victory has occurred but not many.  After six innings tonight Ahoskie lead 3-0 and a sluggish Post 58 team seemed destined for their first lost of the season.

Ahoskie plated three runs in the fourth off 58 started Chase Johnson but two runs were unearned to give Ahoskie Post 102 a 3-0 lead.  The bottom of the fourth Rocky Mount's dugout finally made some noise but every good contact seemed to go straight to a Post 102 player.

Fnally the seventh arrived and Post 102 starter Billy Nixon had given coach David Ellis about all he had Rocky Mount tried to help keep the shutout going by getting thrown out on a steal of third with runners on first and second.  Jeremy Sloop finally got a run home and a Post 102 error opened the flood gates leading to another six runs to cross the plate before Post 58 finished the seventh.  The seventh, Post 58 had seven hits all singles.

Post 58 again gets great pitching as starter Chase Johnson pitched the first five innings.  Jeremy Trevathan held Post 102 in check for the next two to pick up the win and Cameron Webb closed the door in the eighth and ninth innings.  In four games this week Post 58 has allowed only 13 runs.  That will win you a lot of ball games even if you only get singles when batting.   Post 58 goes to 4-0 with a 7-3 victory over Post 102.

The NCAA baseball tournament starts Friday and Mike Fox has announced that Hobbs Johnson will get the call to pitch Friday for the North Carolina Tar Heels.   Whenever these four teams tournaments get going there is always a question of when do you pitch you ace and for North Carolina they have decided to pitch Kent Emanuel on Saturday which they hope is the winners bracket game and that leaves Benton Moss  to toss Sunday for the Heels.  Over in Raleigh the Pack is stating Vance Williams in their Friday opener holding Carlos Rodon till Saturday.   ECU Opens play at 11AM Friday Morning in the Chapel Hill Regional.  Kind of an odd time to play since there is only going to be two games played in Chapel Hill.