CALEDONIA – With two outs already in his back pocket in the third inning, Caledonia pitcher Reid Garrett took a moment to find the calm amid the calamity before getting back to work. He picked up his foot, wound up his right arm and fired a heater toward home plate. Strike three. Caledonia’s home crowd clapped and cheered as Garrett himself shouted and strutted off the mound back toward the dugout. It was just the beginning of another pitching gem from the Liberty University commit.
Caledonia head coach Chase Reeves knew coming into the contest that timely hits and excellent pitching would be the difference in the series against their arch rivals – and the Cavs got just that Thursday night at home. After falling behind 1-0 in the first inning, Caledonia got two RBI doubles, one in the third and one in the fifth, to clinch a 2-1 victory in Game 1.
“Just proud of the effort,” Reeves said. “I told them early that how we handle adversity is going to be everything, and for them to go out there in the first inning and give one up and bounce back and just continue to play (against) a really good baseball team. Proud of the way we competed.”
Drew Glenn singled off Garrett in his first-inning plate appearance for New Hope to get on base, and a sacrifice fly and passed ball allowed him to quickly get to third base. Brayden Edmiston smacked a sac fly to score Glenn, and New Hope looked like it was about to take control early. But then, as often happens when these teams meet, a pitchers’ duel set in. Edmiston and Garrett went back and forth with excellent innings, only broken up by a game-tying RBI double blasted by Cohen Clark to score Jackson Dawkins, who got on base with a walk. It was only the second hit given up by Edmiston, but it was a costly one.
He responded by dishing out a scoreless fourth but let a few pitches get away from him in the fifth that ended up deciding the game. After forcing a flyout, Edmiston hit Cohen Clark with a pitch to put a runner on base and then let a pitch hang too long above the plate and Cooper Shelnut put a barrel on it and drove it into the gap in left field to take the lead for good.
It was the Cavs’ third and final hit of the contest, but it was all they needed to pull away.
“That’s kind of what we’ve been working on all year,” Reeves said. “There’s high-leverage at-bats in baseball and those guys stepped up and delivered big hits.”
After that first inning, Garrett closed out the game with six straight scoreless innings powered by 10 strikeouts and only gave up two total hits with two walks.
“Reid threw really, really well,” Reeves said. “He found a way to get out of some things. That was a really good game from Reid and the guys responded. We got enough and that’s all that matters.”
Edmiston finished with only three hits allowed, along with four walks and three hit batters. He also struck out five Cavaliers.
“It was just a classic pitchers’ duel and we kind of knew that going in,” New Hope head coach Lee Boyd said. “I felt like Brayden threw really well for us, but the difference in the game was some timely hits.”
Those hits ended up going the Cavs’ way, but there were a few moments the Trojans looked as if they were about to storm back. In the top of the seventh, Carson Willis connected on a screaming shot to left field that looked as if it were long gone, but the ball arced down toward the fence and Blake Bates made a leaping grab to save the day. There’s just something about that thick Caledonia air, Boyd said.
“It was right on the fence and when he hit it I thought it was a no-doubter,” Boyd said. “I thought he got it way out. It kind of hung up there and he caught it on the fence. He hit one to center that a kid caught maybe a step from the fence. I don’t know. The ball hasn’t carried well there.”
Game 2 of the series is set for 7 p.m. today at New Hope where the Cavs are looking to close the door on their rivals, while the Trojans are keen on trying to get back into the series. Just like in Game 1, Boyd said his team is going to need to come up with some timely hits to force a Game 3.
“It’s just one of those things where you have to be fortunate enough to put a good swing on a ball at the right time,” he said. … “We expect it to be a close game (tonight) as well.”
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