AAA Sox’ win over Jonesboro tempered by loss of top hitter
EDITOR’S NOTE: Because the look back at each day in Bryant athletic history has been so favorably received during the time when there was no sports during the COVID-19 shutdown, BryantDaily.com will continueposting past stories of Bryant athletics either posted on BryantDaily.com (from 2009 to the present) or published in the Bryant Times (from 1998 to 2008).
JONESBORO — Though they were still ranked No. 1 in the state, the Bryant Black Sox AAA American Legion team had been scuffling for two or three weeks leading up to the Arkansas State University Tournament July 5. So, it was understandable that manager Craig Harrison was a little uneasy about the team’s opening game. It was against the team ranked No. 2 with a bullet, the Jonesboro Ricemen.
How would the Sox respond?
Well, they were nothing short of great as they posted a 6-2 win behind the five-hit pitching of lefty Brad Chism.
Harrison later admitted that it felt like the Sox were back to their old selves. Everyone was charged up and ready to get a roll going as the final weeks of the regular season loomed.
But that highest high of the season didn’t last long when it was learned that the Sox may have lost shortstop Matt Brown, the team’s leading hitter (.398) and RBI man (46), for the rest of the season.
Brown, who had tripled in two runs to put Bryant ahead 3-2 in the bottom of the third, was hit in the jaw with a pitch from Jonesboro’s Isaac Dillon in his next at-bat, leading off the sixth inning.
Harrison and the Bryant faithful lodged a protest with the Jonesboro coaches and the umpires. Dillon, to that point, had not walked a batter — he didn’t walk any the rest of the way either — and Harrison suspected that the beanball was intentional.
Brown, though dazed, continued to play and he eventually scored the first of three insurance runs in the inning. There was reason to believe he was going to be fine.
But later, after the game, Brown complained of the pain and the swelling was obvious. A trip to the hospital confirmed the worst. He had a broken jaw.
Though the Sox won their next two games, the offense was not the same after Brown was lost. They scored just 10 runs in the next four games and split them.
Bryant defeated the Kansas City Sluggers 1-0 and one of the two St. Louis Prospects squads 3-0 on Friday, July 6.
On Saturday, however, they battled the second Prospects team for 13 innings before losing 5-4 on Saturday. That set up a re-match with Jonesboro in the third-place game on Sunday. This time, the Ricemen, behind ace Corey Ragsdale, took a 3-1 win in a game that featured more hit batsmen for both teams.
(Harrison noted that the players his pitchers hit took the hits in the rump or legs, pointing that out to the Jonesboro coaches along the way as well.)
The results left the Sox 29-9 heading into the final two weeks of the regular season.
Jonesboro 3, Bryant 1
Bryant managed just two hits off Ragsdale. Michael McClellan had a lead-off double in the fourth and Chris Sory singled with two down in the seventh. Ragsdale walked four, hit a batter and struck out three.
Jonesboro scored all three of its runs in the third. A pair of Bryant errors and a hit batsman contributed to the uprising.
Bryant scored its run in the fourth. After McClellan’s double, Jordan Davis tapped to first to move him over to third. After Beau Hamblin walked an errant pickoff throw from Ragsdale allowed McClellan to score.
The only other Bryant threat came in the fifth when Matt White drew a two-out walk and Dustin Morris was hit by a pitch after White had stolen second and moved to third on a wild pitch.
Prospects No. 2 5,
Bryant 4 (13 innings)
Chris Sory pitched the first seven innings and surrendered just two runs (one unearned) on seven hits but the Sox couldn’t get much going offensively. They were able to tie the game at 2 with a pair of runs in the fifth. That’s when Kevin Littleton drew a lead-off walk then reached second when the Prospects botched a force out on a grounder by Matt Lewis. Scott Yant got a sacrifice bunt down then White came through with a two-run single up the middle.
With Sory retiring the last seven batters he faced, the Sox put together a threat in the bottom of the seventh. Lewis walked, Yant singled and White walked to load the bases with one out. Morris shot a line drive to shortstop and Lewis was caught off the third-base bag for an inning-ending doubleplay.
Cody Dreher took over for Sory and worked into the 10th before giving way to Beau Hamblin with two on and two out. Hamblin got the final out to keep it deadlocked.
It remained tied until the 12th when the Prospects mustered a pair of runs, loading the bases with a walk and a pair of singles. With two down, a double snapped the tie.
But Bryant knotted it back up in the bottom of the inning. Yant walked and White doubled to set up the inning. Yant scored on Morris’s sacrifice fly and White came home with the tying tally on a base hit by McClellan. Jordan Davis singled McClellan to second with the game-winner run but the next two batters were retired.
The Prospects got another two-out RBI hit in the top of the 13th and, this time, Bryant had no answer, going down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the inning.
The Prospects out-hit the Sox 18-9 in the game. Davis was 3-for-6 and White 3-for-5 to account for 2/3 of Bryant’s hits.
Bryant 3, Prospects No. 1 0
Yant, with seventh inning relief from Hamblin, pitched a three-hit shutout as the Sox notched their 29th win of the season on Friday. In six innings, Yant fanned nine and walked just two. He surrendered a lead-off double in the second, a lead-off single in the fourth and an infield hit with one out in the sixth. Hamblin retired three in a row in the seventh.
Bryant scored twice in the second. Graddy doubled and stole second. After Lewis was hit by a pitch, a wild pitch allowed Graddy to score. Two outs later, White stroked an RBI single to the left side.
In the fifth, Morris, who went 3-for-4 in the game, smacked a two-out single up the middle. McClellan followed with a base hit to left then both moved up a base on a wild pitch. Davis brought Morris home with a single to right to make it 3-0.
Bryant 1, KC Sluggers 0
Matt Lewis won the pitchers’ duel when, in the top of the eighth, White drew a one-out walk, stole second and scored on a looping single to right by Yant.
The Sluggers, shut out on one hit to that point, threatened to tie it back up in the bottom of the inning by cracking a pair of singles around Lewis’s third strikeout. But Lewis retired the next two to preserve the victory.
Lewis took a no-hitter into the seventh. In fact, he faced just one over the minimum through 6 1/3. The Sluggers’ only base-runner came on a walk to lead off the third. After that Lewis and the Sox defense retired 13 in a row before a clean single up the middle broke up the no-hitter.
Unfazed, Lewis got the next two batters to ground out to short to end the inning.
Up until the eighth, Bryant had been held to just two hits — a first-inning single by Morris and a seventh-inning double by Hamblin.
Bryant 6, Jonesboro 2
After being given a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the third, Chism allowed just two base runners. He pitched around a one-out error in the fourth and a one-out walk in the sixth in picking up the win. Mark Garman’s two-out, two-run single in the top of the third was the last Jonesboro hit.
Bryant took the lead in the bottom of the third when McClellan and Littleton led off with a singles, then advanced to second and third on a passed ball. McClellan raced home on Morris’s groundout and, after White beat out a single to put runners at second and third, Brown mashed a triple to deep left to give the Sox the lead.
It stayed 3-2 until the sixth. Brown led off and was hit in the jaw. He continued, however, and took second on a wild pitch. Hamblin reached when Dillon, the Jonesboro pitcher, fielded his bunt and tried unsuccessfully to retire Brown at third.
An out later, Graddy’s bouncer to short was booted allowing Brown to score. Moments later, Hamblin was awarded homeplate on a balk and, with two down, Littleton singled in Graddy to make it 6-2.
