Travis Puterbaugh, Times Correspondent
Saturday, April 2, 2011
TAMPA — In a showdown between the top two Class 5A, District 9 programs, King and Gaither looked less than their best Saturday afternoon, combining for 23 runs, 23 hits and 11 errors in King's wild 13-10 victory.
Gaither (9-4) rallied back from deficits three times in the first three innings. King (11-5) raced to a 6-1 lead with a five-run second, but the Cowboys responded with five runs of their own. The Cowboys took advantage of a leadoff home run by Zach Johnson and three King errors to tie it a 6 after two innings.
Both teams struggled defensively, whether botching routine ground balls, throwing wide of the bag, or sailing pickoff attempts to the fence.
"You look at the errors and everything, you wonder what happened," said King coach James Macaluso, whose team made six errors. "I guess you have those days."
King jumped ahead in the fourth on a three-run blast by Rafael Cedres, then tacked on another run in the fifth on Sam Rowe's RBI single to take an 11-7 lead.
Gather closed the gap to 11-10 thanks to a crazy sequence in the fifth
With two out, Matthew Frey reached on an error at first to score Kevin Rodriguez. After Oscar Mercado singled to center, the throw from the outfield to gun down Frey at third skipped away from King's third baseman, allowing Frey to score. Another throwing error let Mercado race home as the last attempt to get him out hit a bat in the infield and bounded to the backstop.
In the sixth, the Lions' Javaris Reynolds got hit by a Evan Gainey pitch with the bases loaded to bring in Brett Morales, and Matt Smith scored on a fielders choice by Sinjin Sato to increase King's lead to 13-10.
King's Devin Smith drove in three runs with three hits and pitched 21/3 scoreless innings in relief to close out the win.