Van Buren tops Greenwood in weird one

VAN BUREN 10, GREENWOOD 7

GREENWOOD — The Van Buren Pointers outlasted Greenwood on Tuesday night in the opener of a 5A-West doubleheader that was utterly baffling at times.

Van Buren reliever Eli Gilreath coaxed a ground-ball out with the tying run at the plate in the bottom of the seventh to put a two-hour, 40-minute, 10-7, win over Greenwood out of its misery.

The two teams endured 13 walks, five errors, a serious player injury, a 200-foot wind-aided infield fly, and batters skipping turns in the lineup and batting out of order.

“That was a wild one,” Van Buren coach Luke Weatherford said. “Usually, the first game of the conference doubleheader is low scoring, good defense, and scrapping for runs. This was the opposite of that, but we’ll take it.”

Van Buren (10-3, 2-1) scored four runs in the first inning, taking advantage of four straight walks to open the game, an error and another walk.

The Pointers scored another run in the second inning on a walk and two errors on the same play but only led 5-4 with Greenwood answering with two runs in the bottom of the first inning and two more, which were unearned on consecutive errors, in the second inning.

Greenwood (4-8, 1-2) tied the game in the third inning but only after a long stoppage to attend to right fielder Luke Brewer, who suffered a severe ankle injury sliding into second base on a stolen base after walking to start the inning. His pinch-runner, Carson Hobbs, scored on a run-scoring single by Dawson Holt.

“Luke is the guts, heart and soul kind of guy to our team,” Greenwood coach Chad Mercado said. “It hurt losing him. I think he’s going to be OK. That was a really tough injury. It was ugly to the guys, but they went back tied it up right away. Nobody gave up. It took all of them to battle back in this game.”

Van Buren answered with three runs in the top of the fourth on Jackson Rotert’s double that scored Malachi Henry, who was hit by a pitch, and Presley Nichols, who had walked. Connor Brady scored Rotert with a ground-ball out.

Greenwood rallied in the sixth inning with two runs to get within, 8-7, after a confusing fifth inning when the Bulldogs completely skipped Brewer’s original spot in the order.

In the sixth, Greenwood’s Austin Mitchell slugged a tworun homer, batting in Brewer’s spot.

Van Buren added two runs in the seventh inning, despite having a batter unknowingly called out on the wind-blown infield fly that was dropped well down the left-field line although it did score Chanson Henderson ahead of a runner being tagged out at third base for the final out as Greenwood left the field and left Van Buren wondering how it could be the third out.

Gilreath needed 15 pitches to close out the win in the seventh inning but only after singles by Dylan Strozier and Braden Skaggs, the leadoff hitter who was completely skipped in the sixth inning.

“There was some unfortunate things that happened,” Weatherford said. “We didn’t play well. I’m sure they feel like they didn’t play well either. We’ve been talking about how we need to play cleaner in the field. We keep winning games, which is good, but we haven’t played our best yet.”

Van Buren starter Devin Gattis gutted out the win on the mound, going six innings, striking out five and throwing 99 pitches.