Evans’ hit lifts Storm to victory|[08/04/07]
Published 12:00 am Saturday, August 4, 2007
It’s every baseball player’s dream.
The score is tied and a runner is on second base with two outs in the last inning.
That was the position in which Cameron Evans found himself Friday night in the Governor’s Cup.
And Evans capitalized, stroking a base hit up the middle that scored teammate Travis Haas to give the Vicksburg Storm 14-year-olds’ team a 7-6 win over the Mississippi Longhorns at Bazinsky Field.
“I didn’t care if it was a single, double, triple or a home run, honestly,” said Evans, the Storm’s No. 9 hitter who had been hitless in his first two-at bats of the game. “All I wanted was for him to get home so we could win.”
Haas, a pinch runner put on second after Matthew Warren’s base hit, might have been out at the plate had the Longhorns’ center fielder not bobbled the ball before making the throw.
Still, Haas didn’t slow down until he had crossed home plate.
“That was the longest 180 feet I’ve felt in my life,” Haas said.
It seemed fitting that the game ended on a defensive miscue considering the two teams combined for 12 errors in the five-inning game.
If not for the game-ending dramatics, Friday’s game was one the Storm probably would have rather forgotten.
The Longhorns led 3-0 going into the bottom of the third inning when the Storm scored five runs on three hits and four Longhorn miscues.
But the Storm’s 5-3 lead didn’t last long as the Longhorns scored three runs in the top of the fourth inning on two hits and an error to gain a 6-5 advantage.
The Storm scored one run in the bottom of the fourth to tie the game and the Longhorns managed only a single against Vicksburg pitcher Justin Pettway in the top of the fifth to set up the Storm’s final at-bat.
Warren singled and reached second base on a throwing error to set up Evans’ game-winning hit.
Evans, a rising freshman at Porters Chapel, said he had been in a similar situation once before for a different team and smacked a triple to give his team the win.
Though not a triple, Evans’ base hit was enough to spark a celebration with his teammates behind home plate.
“It felt excellent,” Evans said. “We’re all a team, and all I wanted to do was just get that one run in.”