BETTER LATE
East Hamilton advances with extra-inning victory
CLEVELAND, Tenn. — The way things began for East Hamilton and starting pitcher Jared Price in the District 5-AAA high school baseball tournament opener Wednesday, it didn’t seem like Price would be around long in the game or that the Hurricanes would be around long in the tournament.
But Price rebounded from giving up three first-inning runs, and thanks to shutting out Ooltewah the rest of the way, he was still around to be the beneficiary of East Hamilton’s four-run eighth as the ’Canes avoided elimination with a 7-3 victory at Bradley Central.
East Hamilton (12-20) plays again today at Bradley against either Cleveland or McMinn County, which played in Wednesday’s late game. The winner of today’s elimination game will advance to play top-seeded Bradley at 5 p.m. Friday in the first game of a best-of-three series. Third-seeded Soddy-Daisy and second-seeded Walker Valley are also set for a bestof-three series, with their first game at 8 p.m. Friday.
The Owls, who ended their season 16-12, got four hits off Price in the opening inning. He also walked one and threw a wild pitch that allowed a run to score.
“We had Chuck Bronson warming up in the first inning,” East Hamilton coach Steve Garland said. “If you were given the odds then that he’d be around at the end of the game, much less going eight, I’d say they’d have been pretty low. That was a real gut
check by him.”
Price got a lift from his teammates in the top of the second when, after two were out, Logan Kennedy reached on an infield single and Isaac Moulds followed with a single ahead of Blaine Savage’s triple into the right-field corner. Savage then scored the tying run when the throw to third base got away.
“That was an energy boost for our guys,” Garland said.
Ooltewah left-hander Trevor Wiggs matched Price zero for zero until the eighth, which began with pinch-hitter Mitch Dennis reaching on an error. Center fielder Jackson Stone re-entered to run and went first to third on Grayson Stewart’s sacrifice bunt.
Noah Pridmore broke the tie by grounding a single through the middle of a drawn-in infield, and he later scored on a wild pitch.
“We’ve been emphasizing hit the ball on the ground,” Garland said. “Make people defend. Anybody can catch a popup.”
Wiggs, who was replaced right before Savage’s single, took the loss as the Owls made three errors behind him. He did go 3-for-4 with a double, and teammate Jake Sullivan was 2-for-3 with a double and scored a run.
“We didn’t play well today,” Ooltewah coach Brian Hitchcox said. “We came out and scored three in the first. We had a really good approach. A lot of good things were happening. But after that we made some outs on the bases. We couldn’t make some easy plays. The margin for error is small. You have to take advantage of every scoring opportunity, and we didn’t do that.
“We had seven seniors back from last year, and they gave us everything they had. But we never got where we needed to be defensively. We have some pitchers that pitch to contact, like Wiggs did today. But when you don’t have guys throwing it by them that means you have to make 17, 18 plays a game, and we didn’t have enough of that.”
Garland said the ’Canes were playing for former assistant coach Donald Baker, who is having open-heart surgery soon.
Also, a young boy was struck by a foul ball down the left-field line and had to be taken by ambulance to a local hospital. Garland went to see him after the game and said his condition had improved.