The Central High School baseball team began an important week with a walk-off win against Haralson County Monday night, winning 14-3 in five innings.
The game was supposed to be played last Friday, but was called just three outs away from being an official game with Central up 18-0.
“Haralson County is young and hungry, and sometimes when you start over you can never really tell,” Central coach Jeff Bryant said. “I was glad the sticks came alive, pretty solid defense, Blaine [Carter] threw an outstanding game. I’m just glad to get this one behind us and look forward to a busy week.”
The Lions (11-9, 4-4 Region 6-AAA) play Troup tonight, LaGrange on Thursday and Shaw on Friday. All are region games with playoff implications for Central.
“I ran a couple times there up, and I told [Haralson County coach] Levi [Crowdis] normally I wouldn’t do that,” Bryant said. “But I was just trying to end this thing to save our arms. No disrespect to them at all, but with three huge games this is the biggest week Central baseball has had since probably 2004, 2005. We wanted to end it early to save our arms.”
The Lions were up 10-0 going into the fourth inning, but Haralson County wasn’t going down without a fight.
The Rebels (2-17, 0-9 Region 6-AAA) pushed one run across the plate as Zach McKenzie scored on Bryce Wrenn’s RBI double to left-center field. HC added two more runs in the fifth as Justin Akins’ RBI double scored Connor Davis, and McKenzie’s RBI ground out scored Dalton Smith to make it a 10-3 game going into the bottom of the fifth.
Spencer Lewis led off the inning with a single, and after a strikeout Garrett White walked and Joe Alley was hit by a pitch to load the bases. Another strikeout brought Duke Daily to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded. Daily delivered with a walk-off grand slam to dead center field, putting the Lions up 14-3 and ending the game.
“I wasn’t too happy with Duke from a base running mistake the previous inning,” Bryant said. “But he came back and made up for it. Just trying to get his head on the ball and try to hit the ball more gap-to-gap than pulling the ball. Real happy for him, real happy for the kids.”
Daily was thrown out at the plate in the fourth inning trying to score from third on Tyler Wilson’s ground ball to the third baseman.
Spencer Lewis led the Lions on offense going 3-for-3 with a double, a triple, a walk, four runs scored and two RBI.
“Scooter, he’s just a kid, he’s a pup. As this year has gone on he’s come on strong,” Bryant said. “We’re going to be counting on him heavily this week and in the future. He’s a good one.”
John Harman (2-2, BB, 2 runs, 4 RBI) and Alley (2-3, HBP, 2 runs) also had big days at the plate for Central.
McKenzie led the way for the Rebels going 2-for-3 with a run scored and an RBI.
Carter earned the win giving up one run on four hits in four innings of work, walking none and striking out nine.
“I just pounded the strike zone. Finally got back to what I was doing before and had my slider working for me,” Carter said. “Just threw what the coaches called and it worked for me.”
Carter also stressed the significance of the three remaining games this week, and how important it was starting the week off with a win.
“It’s definitely big [to win] because we’ve got Troup [today],” Carter said. “We’ve got big games this week, all region games. Got to finish the season strong to get in the playoffs.”
Central will travel to Troup today for a first pitch at 6 p.m. while Haralson County will host Columbus at 5:30 p.m.
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