Columbus was one strike away from collecting its third win in as many days.
Then things took a heartbreaking turn for the Indians.
East Union’s Ethan Hitt hit a two-run walk-off home run to lift his team to a 5-4 victory over the Indians Saturday afternoon in the Dizzy Dean 12-year-old South State Tournament at Propst Park.
“I thought it was going to be caught in the outfield, but it was just a good, solid hard hit to centerfield over the fence. There was nothing we could do about it,” Columbus coach Robbie Shaw said.
Columbus now finds itself in the losers’ bracket for the first time in the tournament. The Indians play today at 2 p.m. against the winner of Sherman and Houston. Those two teams meet at noon today. The Indians must win three games in a row to make the championship game, and then they have to knock off an unbeaten team twice to win the championship.
“We’ve just got to be smart about our pitching so we can survive and hopefully make it to the championship game,” said Shaw whose team has beaten Vardaman and Saltillo in this tournament.
The Indians took a 3-0 lead in the first inning thanks to three walks and a couple of wild pitches. East Union scored two in the home half of the first frame to cut the lead to one.
East Union then tied things up with a run in the second inning, but it didn’t last long, as Columbus took a 4-3 lead on an Andrew Chism run-scoring single.
No runs were scored in the fourth or fifth innings, but East Union had chances in both frames.
“They played really hard,” Shaw said of his team. “We just made three or four errors early on and it ended up coming back to bite us in the end.”
Chism, Will Teague and Bailey Rowzee all had hits for the Indians. Rowzee’s knock was a double.
In other action, the Starkville All-Stars won twice to stay alive in the losers’ bracket. They started the day with a 13-9 victory over Saltillo.
Starkville finished the day with a 10-0, five inning win over Newton County. The All-Stars scored in every inning, including four in the fourth inning to take control. Charlie Cox had four hits and four RBIs, including a walk-off RBI single in the fifth inning. Eli Bonnette had two singles and three RBI.
Caledonia scored six runs in the fifth inning and hung on to eliminate Calhoun City. West Point was eliminated early Saturday by Sherman.
Starkville and Caledonia meet today at noon in an elimination game.
Ben Wait is a sports writer for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @bcwait
Ben Wait reports on Mississippi State University sports for The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 43 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.