Red Foxes keeping winning streak alive against Falcons
Even after trying to stage a comeback, Darlington didn’t have what it took to overcome an early Red Fox domination during their game again Hartsville April 17. Photo by Drake Horton
By Drake Horton, Contributing Writer
Darlington – History continued to repeat itself this past Tuesday, April 17 as the Hartsville Red Foxes defeated the Darlington Falcons baseball team 8-5 on senior night.
Starting the two-game series in Darlington, the Falcons were looking to snap a five-year losing streak against the Red Foxes and play themselves into third place in the region.
Instead, Darlington fell behind 5-0 after two innings and spent the rest of the game trying to check up; something that it was never able to do.
Starting the scoring off with long solo blast in the top of the first inning by Weider Wilfong, Hartsville pushed three runs across the plate in the inning and added two more in the second inning.
“They took advantage of us early,” Darlington head coach Dennis Gearhart said. “We gave them some extra opportunities. Every time we are having a conversation it seems to be when you give good baseball teams extra outs they take advantage of it, whether it is in our favor or against us. We gave them some opportunities early.”
Down by five after just two innings of play and having not beaten the Red Foxes in such a long time, it would have been easy for the Falcons to roll over and quit. That, however, was not the case in this matchup of rivals.
After finally holding Hartsville scoreless in the top of the third inning, the Falcons found offense in the bottom half of the third inning, scoring four runs and cutting the Red Foxes lead to just one.
Mike Dixon and Garrett Knight started the inning off for Darlington with back-to-back hits, a double by Dixon and a RBI single by Knight.
As promising as the start of the inning was, it looked doomed right after Knight’s RBI single as a lucky bounce from Keyshawn Taylor’s ground ball allowed Hartsville to turn a 6-3 double play, but with two outs and the top of the lineup coming up, Darlington found some rhythm and a little magic.
Malike Cooper, Gage Weatherford and Jake Jones hit back to back to back doubles resulting in two more runs and the Falcons added the final run of the inning when a throwing error on Quay Gandy’s grounder allowed Jones to score from second.
Down now only by one, it was a whole new ball game, but that feeling did not last long. Over the next two innings, Darlington’s offense went cold again and Hartsville added three more runs to its one-run lead, scoring one in the fourth and two in the fifth.
The Falcons added a run in the bottom of the sixth to bring the deficit back to three, but that is where it would stay as neither team scored any runs for the remainder of the game.
“I’m real proud of the guys fighting back,” Gearhart said. “I thought overall we hit ok, but when you dig yourself a hole it’s hard to get out of sometimes and we just didn’t quite have enough tonight to get out of it.”
There was a bit of controversy in the bottom of the seventh, however. Chase Weatherford had hit what looked to be a two-RBI double down the left-field line, but it was instead ruled foul by the home plate umpire and Weatherford ended up striking out two pitches later to end the game.
Weekly Recap
Darlington lost its last regular season game of the year this past Friday on the road to Hartsville.
The Red Foxes were able to walk away with a 2-1 win and third place in the region.