Sport Shop Sox overwhelm Hot Springs Village
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).
On Tuesday night at Bryant High School Field, the Hot Springs Village AA American Legion team began their game with the Bryant Sport Shop Black Sox with just eight players. In turn, Bryant finished the game with eight.
The Sox got the better of it. When HSV was short-handed, they built a 9-0 lead and never looked back on the way to a 19-4 win. Bryant hammered 20 hits including four by Grayson Prince and three each from Diego Vargas and Hunter Oglesby. Joey Cates and Alex Thompson each drove in three runs.
The Villagers started with eight because a ninth was late returning from a trip to Shreveport. So they played outfielders in right-center and left-center. The centerfielder arrived in the middle of Bryant’s eight-run second.
The Sox were down to eight at the end. Manager Hunter Mayall had inserted all of his reserves by the fifth inning so when centerfielder C.J. Wallace came running in before the start of the top of the sixth with a bloody nose, Mayall just moved Oglesby and Ethan Thompson into the gaps to cover.
But Drew Brown, the third Sox pitcher, struck out two around a single and a walk to end the game, which was scheduled to go nine innings. But the 15-run lead made it a run-rule final.
Wallace had started the game on the mound and took a no-hitter into the fourth inning while his teammates were building a 17-0 lead. The Villagers scored twice on a walk, an error and their first hit, a two-out single by Layne Parsons in that fourth before Wallace recorded his five strikeout.
The Sox, who improved to 10-6 on the season going into Thursday’s doubleheader against Malvern, scored six times in the first inning. Cates led off the frame with a sharp single to right. He advanced on a wild pitch. Oglesby walked. Both moved up on Caleb Chaffin’s groundout then Cates scored on a bouncer to second by Matthew Sandidge.
Daniel Darbonne reached on an error and Prince belted a double to make it 3-0. Alex Thompson followed with a two-bagger that chased home two. Vargas slapped a single to right and it was 6-0.
In the second, Oglesby led off with a triple to left-center. Chaffin, Sandidge and Kyzer belted consecutive RBI doubles then Darbonne and Prince singled as the lead grew to 10-0.
Alex Thompson’s grounder to short drew a wild throw to first and the bases were loaded for Vargas. He chopped one up the middle that Hot Springs Village shortstop Austin Brown got to only to throw late and wildly to first. Darbonne and Prince scored and the Villagers made a pitching change.
Brown relieved Steven Love and got Cates to hit a grounder to second. But another errant throw resulted as Alex Thompson scored. Oglesby’s second hit of the inning loaded the bases as the Sox began to play it station-to-station. Vargas scored when Chaffin bounced into a force at second, making it 14-0.
Wallace, who had pitched around a one-out walk in the first, worked around a hit batsman in the third. And, in the bottom of the inning, Bryant continued to hit and score.
Darbonne led off the home third with his second hit, Prince beat out an infield hit and Vargas smacked a single to right to fill the sacks for Cates who delivered a shot off the base of the wall in right for a two-run double. Oglesby singled in Vargas and it was 17-0.
After Hot Springs Village picked up its first two runs in the top of the fourth, Noah Easterling, who would take over on the mound in the top of the fifth, led off Bryant’s fourth with a pinch-hit walk. Prince cracked a double to left-center and Alex Thompson delivered a sacrifice fly.
The run-rule was in effect going into the fifth but Hot Springs Village managed two more runs to stay alive. Cody Fortner, who had two of his team’s five hits in the game, led off with a single. He stole second, took third on Austin Brown’s single and scored on a base hit by Alex Trantham with two down. Walks to Love and Zack Gould forced in a run to make it 18-4.
Bryant made it a 15-run lead again in the bottom of the fifth when Oglesby reached on an error, advanced to third on a single by Wallace and scored on Drew Brown’s groundout.
Fortner singled and Austin Brown walked in the top of the sixth but Drew Brown got the final out when Love popped to Cates at short.
