If you had wanted to see Signal Mountain and Soddy Daisy play baseball this spring and just haven’t had the opportunity, you’ll get another chance at noon on Sunday at Signal Mountain High School.
These two proud programs split their two games during the regular season, but Soddy Daisy was the champion with just one district loss to Signal’s two. They met for the third time last weekend at Red Bank in the district tournament with Signal Mountain prevailing by a 9-8 final in a game that took two days to complete after bad weather suspended play on Friday night.
And now these two teams will battle once more for a Region title on Sunday at noon after both rolled past their first-round opponents to win in a pair of games that ended after five innings due to the run rule.
Soddy Daisy took care of business in Saturday’s first game at Signal Mountain with an impressive 11-0 win over the Heritage Mountaineers while the host Eagles were also impressive in an 11-1 come-from-behind win over the Loudon Redskins in the second game.
Improving to 24-8 for the season, the Eagles allowed a hit in the first inning and an unearned run after making back-to-back fielding errors, but that was all the Redskins got as Signal Mountain knotted the score with a run in the first.
They took charge with four more in the third before ending the game with six in the fifth.
Signal Mountain senior Ben Timblin, who will playing college baseball for Wofford next spring, has gotten a lot of publicity over his hitting and all of that is justified for sure, but he proved on Saturday that’s he’s also a pretty good pitcher after going the distance and allowing no earned runs on two hits while walking none and striking out four.
“I feel like I threw it well and I needed a game like that, but all of the run support made it really easy,” Timblin said shortly after the game ended.
“When we do what we need to do, we can be pretty good. We’re all looking forward to the game with Soddy tomorrow,” he concluded with a smile.
Signal Mountain coach Josh Gandy was glad to see his team prevail against a team that’s much better than that final score might indicate.
“We had to battle a little adversity early and we had to battle at the plate, but Loudon has a good team and everybody’s good at this point,” the veteran coach said later.
“I thought that Ben pitched well and he also did a great job fielding his position with three straight putouts, but we need him to pitch like that if we expect to advance very far. But we took care of business today and that’s the most important thing. Now we get to play Soddy Daisy again and I’m sure it will be another dog fight just like it always is,” Gandy finished with a grin.
While Timblin was impressive on the mound, he didn’t have a hit. He did get hit by a pitch in the first inning and walked two of his final three times to bat. Courtesy runner Sam Edmondson stole second, went to third on a wild pitch and scored the tying run on a passed ball.
Barrett Anderson and Blake Wolfard both had back-to-back two-run singles in the third.
Cash Keene and Wolfard both had RBI-doubles in the fifth while Bo Cooper’s sacrifice fly made it 10-1 before Max Rackel reached on Loudon’s third error of the inning, allowing Jake Edmondson to scamper home with the winning run.
Wolfard had the big bat for the Eagles with three hits and three RBIs. Anderson also had two hits, scored twice and drove in two.
Signal Mountain finished the game with eight hits while the Redskins had but two.
LOUDON 100 00 – 1 2 3
SIGNAL MOUNTAIN 104 06 – 11 8 3
Bethel, Eller (5) and Kelso; Timblin and Wilburn.
(Email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@gmail.com)