Adams’ bat, Dickerson’s arm send Darlington past Hartsville
By Drake Horton
Contributing Writer
Heading into its game at home against Hartsville this past Friday, there were a couple of underlying factors that were not boding well for Darlington Post 13.
The first was the fact that four players, all of whom can pitch, were not going to be available while Hartsville was going to be at full strength. The second was that in the same circumstances, earlier in the week Darlington had played Hartsville on the road and got embarrassed, losing 15-2.
Those two factors, along with Hartsville having only one loss in the region, made the outlook going into this game this past Friday night pretty bleak. Somehow, though, the players for Darlington did not get the memo as Post 13 shocked Hartsville 3-2 in nine innings.
“I am really at a loss for words on how we played tonight,” Darlington head coach Joe Kolodziej said. “We played everything right tonight. From the strategy to what we had, to the plan we had and the execution of pitches, the executions of plays, the executions of controlling the strike zone and keeping ourselves in hitter counts. Overall it was a team effort that everyone had a piece into tonight. I emptied out the whole bench and I had nobody left. These guys found a way to pull it off. Sometimes the breaks come our way and they did tonight.”
Tied at 2-2 in the bottom of the ninth and the game-winning run on second, catcher Jacob Adams hit what may have been the most important pop-up in recent Darlington baseball history, resulting in an error allowing Chuck Keith to score all the way from second to win the game for Darlington.
Two pitches earlier Adams nearly ended the game with a double down the left field line, but it landed foul by inches. On the pop-up, which happened with two outs, it looked like Hartsville was going to be headed to the 10th. Instead an error at the most opportune time between Hartsville’s shortstop and third baseman allowed Adams to reach and Keith to score.
“I had two strikes with two outs and before I went up there, I saw the guy at second and I just thought I had a chance to win the game,” Adams said. “I missed that first by inches, then I swung at changeup outside, just told myself I have to put it in play. When I popped it up I knew I had chased a high pitch.
At first I was like, ‘Gosh, I just lost us a chance,’ but then as I got to first I saw them (the Hartsville third baseman and shortstop) talking, looking at each other and the ball dropped and it’s an amazing feeling to beat Hartsville.”
This was not the first time in the game that Adams had to come up with a big play at the plate. After leading Hartsville 1-0 for four innings and being tied at one for two, Darlington surrendered the lead for the first time in the top of the seventh, giving Hartsville a 2-1 lead.
Down, but not out, Adams brought the team together, told them they were not going to lose and followed his words up with a RBI sacrifice fly to right field, sending the game to extra innings.
“That’s what we live for in baseball,” Adams said. “I told the team out there, ‘We didn’t come this far to lose.’ We fought all the way to the seventh inning and we were down by one. I told them, ‘If y’all get on, we are going to put a run on the board,’ and that is what we did.”
But while Adams was a critical figure in Darlington’s win, the performance that Bryant Dickerson did on mound was nothing short of a masterpiece. In the heat of summer he pitched 7 2/3 innings allowing only two runs when most pitchers in Major League Baseball cannot make it past six.
“You just have to have the endurance, the defense just has to be behind you,” Dickerson said. “We just didn’t let up.”
That endurance that he speaks of is something he has been able to show not just in this game, but in others throughout this season and Kolodziej echoed those thoughts, mentioning not only how important it was with no depth at pitching with the four players out, but what it has done for the bullpen in general with all the games that has been played due to make-ups because of weather.
“It was huge,” Kolodziej said. “Whenever he is on the mound we all get behind him and we seem to play our best games and with this week and last week, missing all of those guys and having all of these games he saved our bullpen.”
With the win Darlington is now 5-3 in the region and 5-5 overall.