In baseball, perhaps more than any other sport, luck plays a big part sometimes. One wouldn't get much of an argument from Cedar Bluff head coach Taylor Talbot after his Tigers swept Ragland in the second round of the Class 1A state playoffs on Friday. The scores were 12-11 and 7-2.Lady Luck shined on the Tigers (17-13) late in game one. With the game tied at 11-11 and the Tigers at the plate in the bottom of the seventh inning, eighth grader Lance Estes walked with one out. He missed a sign going to second with Marcus Reese up to the plate and just barely got in on the tag. Reese then bunted Estes over to third and Seth Gordon brought him home on a walk-off single to center off Ragland pitcher Eli Honeycutt.
“The main thing I love about them is when they mess up, they're going to mess up full speed,” Talbot said. “Lance just barely inched it out. He could have idled it down, but he messes up full speed right there and it works out for us. If you play the game full speed, if you play the game hard, good things are going to happen.”
That seemed to spark the Tigers in game two, as they jumped out to a 2-0 lead early in game two that bulged to the 6-2 in the second. The Tigers tacked on a run in the fifth for the final.
“That's the way it went all night for us,” Ragland coach Rodney Lipscomb said. “Everything that they done was great. Everything we did didn't work. That's baseball. That's part of it.”
In game one, it was the Purple Devils (16-11) who jumped out early. They plated a run in the top of the first on a double to center from Caleb Crews that scored Kurt Lipscomb, who walked earlier in the inning.
Cedar Bluff tied the game at 1-1 in the bottom of the second on an unearned run, but Jamarcus Embry put Ragland back on top with a two-run homer to right field to take a 3-1 lead.
The Tigers battled back for eight runs in the fourth to take a 9-3 lead. They sent 12 men to the plate, with the big blow of the inning a two-run triple to right off the bat of Luke May.
Cedar Bluff increased its lead to 10-3 in the bottom of the fifth before Ragland would rally again with six runs in the sixth. The Purple Devils sent 12 batters to the plate and had a pair of two-run doubles from the bats of Lipscomb and Honeycutt to make it 10-9 in favor of the Tigers.
Cedar Bluff scratched a run across in the bottom of the fifth to make it 11-9, but again, Ragland wouldn't back down as it tied the game in the top of the seventh with two runs. Lipscomb, who went 2-for-4 in the game, came up big again, as he doubled home J.T. Caldwell and Embry.
That set the stage for Estes and Gordon's heroics.
Embry led the Purple Devils in game one by going 3-for-4. Crews was 2-for-4 and Honeycutt was 2-for-5. Honeycutt also suffered the loss.
May got the win for the Tigers and Gordon got the save. The duo also led the Tigers at the plate in game one. May was 3-for-4 while Gordon went 2-for-3.
In game two, Jarad Holcomb went 4-for-4, including a double in the fifth inning. Gordon, May, Jim Nelson and Justin Norton all had a pair of hits.
Levi Mintz picked up the win for the Tigers, while Caldwell suffered the loss for the Purple Devils.
Cameron Hazelwood led Ragland at the plate in game two by going 2-for-3 with a double. Embry was 2-for-4 with double.
Lipscomb said he was proud of how the Purple Devils battled to the end.
“We came back, but we're still learning how to play,” he said. “I've only got one senior on the team and bunches of ninth graders. We're happy to be in the second round, but I give them (Cedar Bluff) all the credit. They run the bases well. They put the bat on the ball. They put pressure on you and make you do what you're supposed to.”
