Sports

Wild ride continues

• Less than five days since the Baconton Charter baseball team fought back from a 6-0 deficit in the first round of the GHSA Class A state playoffs against Claxton — remarkably scoring seven runs in the bottom of the seventh inning in a decisive Game 3 to rally for the win and advance — the Blazers’ amazing run continues today.

Derek Barichello

BACONTON — Four days after the biggest win in Baconton Charter baseball history, Blazers players are still practicing the story they hope to one day tell their children.

That is of the improbable comeback from a 6-0 deficit to Claxton in the seventh inning of the third and deciding game to cap off a wild weekend in the opening round of the Class A state playoffs.

With the amazing win, they advanced to the second round for the first time in the program’s four-year history as Game 1 kicks off today at 3 p.m. at Pacelli.

“Never in my 31 years of coaching have I ever seen anything like that," Baconton coach Bubber Birdsong said.

Even days removed from the excitement, interjections were dished out at a fastball’s pace.

“Wow,” said Blazers senior Preston Maier, who recorded the game-winning hit to advance. “It was miraculous. That’s the only way to describe it.”

Facing what seemed an insurmountable deficit after grounding out to open the seventh, Maier thought his high school career was finished.

He was not alone.

Birdsong concocted his end of the season speech in the third base coaching box and catcher Chance Tompkins put away his gear.

Spring appeared to come to an end.

Even this Blazers team with a flare for the dramatic all but conceded defeat.

Remember, this was the same team that recorded early-season come-from-behind wins against Bacon County and at Seminole County, and nearly missed the playoffs with a loss to Seminole in the region tiebreaker but kept their season alive with a win in the region tournament against Atkinson.

But ...

“I just didn’t think seven was possible,” Blazers junior Tyler Pinson said. “I still don’t know how it happened.”

It would be different if the Blazers had been ripping pitcher Kelvin Goodson all day. But Baconton only recorded one hit to before the seventh point. Even that came way back in the first inning.

With one out in the books, the magic began when Tompkins hit a solo home run. James Davis and Bo Tipler follows with with singles. Pinson drove them in.

Down to their final out and still trailing by three after a line drive was caught, Bryant Anglin singled. Then Jakie Williams reached safely on a unsuccessful fielder’s choice and Tyler Neal was hit by a pitch.

It left the bases loaded for Maier in the bottom of the final inning of a 6-4 game.

He promptly doubled to the right field gap to score the winning runs and give the Blazers the baseball memory of their lifetime.

“Just seeing that ball go into the gap and then remembering all of us going crazy, that’ll be my lasting memory,” Maier said of the wild celebration that took place on the Claxton mound afterwards. “I’ll remember just looking for someone to hug.”

The Blazers are hoping that excitement overflows into the series with Pacelli.

"You can preach to them and it'll go over the top of their heads, but these guys know it now," Birdsong said. "They've done it. And that's an advantage."

Saturday's Game 3 was only the end of the fairytale weekend.

It was a rushed arrival on a plane flight that Pinson and Anglin rode to Friday’s doubleheader that set the tone for everything crazy that followed.

After Baconton’s boys tennis team lost in the semifinals to Athens Academy in the Class A Final Four in Jonesboro earlier in the day, Pinson and Anglin, both players on the team, crunched into the back of a four-seat plane at a small airport near the tennis courts to make the baseball game in time.

“When I heard they were going to play tennis, I didn’t think they’d make it,” Tompkins said. “Then we heard they were getting on a plane, and we didn’t know.”

As the Blazers warmed up, Pinson and Anglin were high above the Georgia sky making the scariest trip of their lives to land just to make it to the game on time.

“It was a rough ride,” Pinson said. “It was a shaky take off and then the wind was rough. All I know is that when we saw that runway, it was a great sight.”

After they got off the plane, Pinson and Anglin had little time to gather themselves. They rushed from the small airport to the baseball field and made it right after Birdsong turned his lineup into the home plate umpire.

“I just saw them running up to the field as we were about ready to start,” Tompkins said. “That was a big boost to the team.”

Birdsong entered Pinson in the second inning and Anglin in the later innings. An exhausted Pinson struck out in his first two at-bats, but came up huge in his third at-bat.

With the Blazers behind 4-1 in the seventh inning, he crushed a three-run home run to tie it as the Blazers would later go on to win, 9-6.

“Bryant and I said, ‘We lost in tennis, we’re not going to lose twice,’” Pinson said. “That made my day.”

The Blazers lost Game 2, 12-2, to force the remarkable Game 3.

And when Pinson, who exhausted himself in two GHSA state playoffs and took the wildest ride of his life on a small plane, was asked if he could do it differently, he replied: “I don’t think so,” Pinson said. “It was the only way it could happen.”

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