We are just entering the second week of the prep baseball season and the Hixson Wildcats have already won a game they might remember the rest of their lives.
Facing Notre Dame on the road at Hunter Field on a glorious and sunny Monday afternoon, things didn’t exactly start out all peachy for the Wildcats, but they certainly finished with a bang as they rallied to score nine runs in the final two innings to post a come-from-behind 9-2 over the Fighting Irish.
Both of these teams are now 2-1 and will face each other again at Hixson on Tuesday.
Senior Cooper Bailey was the winning pitcher as he allowed three hits and two unearned runs while recording 10 strikeouts. He got his final strikeout to start the sixth before allowing back-to-back singles to Rily Roberts and Keegan Smith.
He was replaced at that point by Yeray Velazquez, who surrendered a single to Garrett Sullivan to load the bases, but escaped further trouble by getting a swinging third strike for the second out before ending the threat on a pop to second.
The Wildcats are normally a solid team defensively, but Monday just wasn’t their day in the field as they made five errors. Despite that fact, Hixson coach Colton Green was just happy to get the win on the road.
“That was a good win for our team. I really don’t want to think about all the errors, but we can clean stuff like that up. I’m just thankful for Cooper Bailey, who is our dude and just kept throwing strikes all day long.
“He never got flustered by our defense and just kept pitching, getting some key strikeouts along the way. Their kid threw it well too and it took us a while to get going, but Ron Suttles had that huge double in the gap. It’s still early, but we’ll benefit from games like this,” Green nodded.
Notre Dame coach Gatlyn Simmons was just a bit disappointed that his team couldn’t take more advantage of Hixson’s defensive blunders.
“Getting just four hits won’t do the job, but we’re a young team and still trying to figure things out,” he said after a discussion with his team in shallow left field.
“We have a bunch of games scheduled this week and our plan today was to use our bullpen to see how they handled things. They know that when they come into the game with a two-run lead that they need to pitch like that, but we just didn’t have a very good day today.
“That’s a tough loss and it hurts as we’re a better baseball team than what we showed. That’s not the standard of baseball we want to play. We’ll probably have a chip on our shoulder the rest of the week, but the good news about baseball is that there’s always another game tomorrow,” he added.
Bailey didn’t allow his first hit until Sullivan led off the fourth with a sharp infield single. Both of the runs he allowed in the third came with two outs and without the benefit of a hit as the Wildcat defenders made two errors during the inning.
And while Bailey was doing his thing for the Wildcats, Cooper Jones was doing the same for the Irish as Bailey got Hixson’s first hit with two outs in the fifth.
Perhaps the biggest problem for Notre Dame pitchers was the fact that the three of them all allowed four walks each.
And walks were the topic of the hour in the sixth when Hixson sent 10 batters to the plate and took the lead with six runs.
Blayne Harbin, Dallas Rucker and Riley Frazier all walked to load the bases while another walk to Sam Lott drove in the first run. Suttles then had his big blow with a double into the gap in left-center to drive in three runs. Kyler Gilchrist then got hit by a pitch before Velazquez drove in another run with a single to right. Chase Bernard had the final RBI with a sacrifice fly to center.
Just to be on the safe side, Hixson added three more runs in the seventh for a little insurance with Gilchrist driving in two with a double followed by an sac fly to center by Velazquez to end the scoring.
Velazquez got the first two outs in the seventh quickly before walking Justin Allen, but the righty then got a grounder to third from Cale Nausley to end the game.
Both teams finished the game with four hits apiece with Notre Dame’s Sullivan the only one for either team with two.
HIXSON 000 006 3 – 9 4 5
NOTRE DAME 002 000 0 – 2 4 0
Bailey, Velazquez (6) and Lott; Jones, Bouchard (5), Hunt (6) and Smith.
(Email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@gmail.com)