Darlington blanks Pee Dee in junior legion scrimmage
A Pee Dee player gets the out before the Darlington Post 13 player makes it to first base.
Photos by Drake Horton
By Drake Horton, Contributing Writer
It may not have been a regular season game, but that did not take away any of the importance of Darlington Post 13’s win over the Pee Dee junior legion team this past Thursday in Darlington.
Getting an opportunity to get some live game action before the first regular season game of the year, Darlington exploded for nine runs in the sixth inning to end the game with a final score of 10-0 in six innings.
“Overall I thought we pitched really well,” Darlington head coach Dennis Gearhart said. “For the most part we threw strikes, maybe had one or two walks, and didn’t commit an error defensively. Had a couple of opportunities where they had guys in scoring position, we had to bring the infield in and cut down runs which I thought was key. We had pitchers battle out of some of those jams real well.”
Darlington Post 13 gave a strong showing in the pitching department.
It was a pitchers’ duel for the first five innings, before Darlington finally broke a scoreless tie with catcher Trae Buck’s RBI single to center field in the bottom of the fifth inning.
It was set up by Jaques Mullins leading the inning off with a walk and following it up with a stolen base. That allowed Quay Gandy to sacrifice Mullins over to third with Buck coming to bat.
That run was all Darlington needed as Pee Dee ran out of pitching in the sixth inning as Post 13 scored 9 runs, all coming with two outs, to end the game by virtue of the 10-run rule.
With two outs and Keshawn Taylor on second, Rance Hatchell hit a fly ball to left field in what looked to be the third and final out of the inning, but a misread by the left fielder turned it into a RBI double and from there the flood gates busted open.
Pee Dee committed three errors in the inning, which resulted in two runs, had a ball bounce off the pitchers leg that scored another run and hit Nick Perry with the bases loaded to bring in the final run of the game.
Post 13 got solid pitching from all three of their pitchers as Nick Perry pitched the first two innings, Taylor the next two and Gage Weatherford the final two.
Weatherford showed the ability to pitch in pressure situations as Pee Dee had runners on second and third with just one in the top of the fifth and no outs in the top of the sixth inning, but were unable to come away with any runs.
Pee Dee only had four hits for the entire game.
Darlington’s first official game of the season is May 31 at home against South Florence Blue at 6:30.