Darlington uses Lamar’s miscues to beat the Silver Foxes
First baseman Anthony Hopkins waits for the ball to tag out the runner but the Silver Fox player beats it back to the bag.
Photo by Drake Horton
By Drake Horton, Contributing Writer
It was a night of redemption for Darlington Falcons this past Friday at home.
After losing at home the night before to Manning, Darlington came right back with its second straight home game and defeated the Lamar Silver Foxes 5-2.
Against Manning a combination of bad defense to go along a lack of offense led to 6-0 defeat.
“We had a tough night at the ball park last night,” Darlington head coach Dennis Gearhart said after the game. “We challenged the guys to come out and start the game with a little more energy tonight and I thought we did.”
Against Lamar it was the Silver Foxes that were their own worst enemy, committing three errors and throwing two wild pitches that resulted in some way, shape or form in four of the five runs that the Falcons scored in the first two innings of the game.
“I thought we took advantage of some errors, strung some hits together and scored some runs and that is something we haven’t done a very good job of this year, so I was proud of that,” Gearhart said, recapping what he thought helped lead the Falcons to the win.
While it was Lamar that was making the majority of the mistakes, the start of the game had to give Darlington fans, players and coaches a feeling that the previous night was about to be repeated.
Against Manning all six runs were unearned and the first run of the game was unearned putting the Falcons down 1-0 quick in the top of the first inning.
Thankfully, for Darlington the defensive woes that were present on Thursday night were few and far between with the one in the first being the only one that came back to haunt the Falcons. With the defense playing pretty sound, starting pitcher Chase Weatherford and reliever Gage Weatherford took care of business against a strong Lamar offense.
“I think our pitchers are always going to give us a shot, we just have to make plays behind them; for the most part we did a pretty good job on that tonight,” Gearhart said on his team’s defensive play and what it means to his pitching staff. “Lamar is a very good baseball team, I’m thankful that we came and played one of our better games and came away with the win.”
Lamar had multiple chances to close the gap and potentially even tie or take the lead, but each time it was unable to, including the top of the sixth inning with Gage getting the strikeout with the bases loaded and two outs to end the threat.
With the win, Darlington is now 4-2 on the year as region play begins. The Falcons take on Lugoff-Elgin this week with the first game on the road and the second at home this coming Friday.
