AHSAA 5A BASEBALL FINALS: Consecutive triples doom Pike Road

Russellville hoists its fourth blue trophy in six years after win over Pike Road at Riverwalk Stadium. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

Russellville was in desperate need of an offensive spark when Cole Barnett stepped to the plate in the sixth inning. The senior, who had four consecutive singles in the last two days, delivered.

“I had just told the guys in the dugout, ‘we’re going to win this game because we love each other,’” he said. “Those guys are my brothers and I would do anything for them. I just knew we were going to win. I didn’t know how, but I just knew.”

Barnett’s line drive barely eluded left fielder Parker Ceman, rolling to the wall for a triple and triggering four consecutive hits as the Golden Tigers rallied for a stunning 3-2 win over Pike Road at Riverwalk Stadium on Tuesday to earn the Class 5A state baseball title.

Russellville (42-7) won the 5A title for the fourth time in the last six tournaments.

“Our team is one of the most team-oriented group of guys that I’ve ever had,” Russellville coach Chris Heaps said. “There’s a lot of things that we could talk about, but what you saw today is willingness to do whatever it takes.”

Pike Road (29-11) suffered a pair of heartbreaking defeats but it didn’t tarnish the performance of the third-year program which posted its first winning season in 2021 as well as its first trip to the state playoffs.  

“What a game, what a battle,” Pike Road coach Allen Ponder said. “That’s what it is all about. Baseball is that sport that sometimes the ball falls your way, sometimes it doesn’t. Unfortunately, today was one of those days when the ball did not fall our way. But I could not be more proud of a group of kids.”

The Patriots, who made three crucial errors that aided each of Russellville’s runs in a 3-1 victory on Monday, played error-free baseball on Tuesday and had the upper hand in the pitching dual until the decisive sixth inning.

“When we were down to our last eight outs, the thing I told our coaches and players was no matter what the score is, no matter what the adversity is, no matter what the situation is, we’ve got seven innings to play,” Heaps said, “and we’re going to play all seven with a process that’s conducive to winning.”

It was a nice speech but two outs into the sixth inning, Barnett stepped to the plate with just four outs needed by the Patriots to force a third game in the best-of-three series. 

“We dove, that ball misses his glove by inches,” Ponder said. “It was almost like when it came off the bat, we got a good jump and the ball just kept running from us until it caught the gap.”

Even after Barnett’s hit, pinch hitter Andrew Hatton would have to reach base for the Golden Tigers to have any chance of overcoming a 2-1 deficit. He duplicated Barnett’s feat, placing a ball just out of reach of a diving Jax Carlton in right field, resulting in another triple. 

Grayson Thorpe followed with a perfectly placed bunt down the first-base line for a single that scored Hatton and touched off a wild celebration among the Russellville faithful that only minutes earlier had been counting off the outs. 

“They squared up a lot of balls today,” Pike Road starter Clay Slagle said. “They did their job. You’ve just got to try to make pitches and every pitch I made, they hit.”

Slagle had pitched out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the second inning, allowing only a run after he hit John David Bishop with a pitch to force in a run. From there, he managed to pitch around the danger spots in the Russellville lineup until a pair of liners eluded his fielders in the sixth.

“Clay threw great,” Ponder said. “That kind of outing that he gave us today is the kind of outing that we’ve been used to seeing all year long. Russellville barreled up some baseballs. They did a great job of hitting the baseball.”

The same could not be said for Pike Road. If Ponder had been told before the championship series that his pitchers would hold Russellville to three runs in both games, the first-year coach likely would have expressed confidence in his offense’s ability to win the game.

Instead, Emmit Green held the Patriots to one run on Monday and Rowe Gallagher held Pike Road to two runs on Tuesday, keeping the Pike Road batters off balance with curveballs early and fastballs late that proved remarkably effective.

“We got really hot these last few weeks,” Ponder said. “These last couple of games, we’ve been able to get a hit here and there but we haven’t been able to string any together. That does have a lot to do with their pitching. They did a great job of locating the fastball away and throwing two pitches for a strike. When you can throw the breaking ball for a strike and throw ‘backwards’ and locate the fastball away, it makes it difficult.

“We didn’t swing it as well as we wanted to, we expected to swing it better, but I think that has a lot to do with how well they threw on the mound.”

Stunned by the turn of events, Pike Road came a couple of feet short of forcing extra innings when Iverson Hooks launched a fly ball to left that bounced on top of the outfield wall but failed to clear the railing above the wall, resulting in a ground-rule double. 

Hooks tried to steal third when reliever Reed Hill was starting his windup, but Hill stepped off the rubber, threw to third and Nicholas Smith tagged out Hooks for the second out. Ceman struck out on the next pitch to end the game.

“I’ll take that one,” Ponder said. “This is, hands down, one of the best athletes in the state of Alabama. He relies on instincts. Was it the right time to do it? No. It wasn’t the right time to do it, but Iverson saw something, he thought he could get there and he took off. If he would’ve gotten there and the next pitch was a passed ball, then we’re talking about what a great play it was.”