By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
If you follow the weekly scoreboard section in the Defender sports pages, you may have noticed some pretty lopsided scores as the spring baseball season has progressed. That was most definitely not the case last Thursday, April 23 when the North Adams Green Devils made the trip east on Route 41 to tangle with with the rival Peebles Indians. An outstanding pitching match up of Peebles freshman lefty Braylen Stephens and North Adams sophomore right hander Trace Evans resulted in one of the tightest contests of the season.
The two pitchers combined to allow just nine hits and it was a single run plated by the Indians in the bottom of the fourth inning that made the difference as the Tribe held on to claim a 2-1 Southern Hills Athletic Conference victory and stay just percentage points behind Whiteoak in the small school division race.
Both teams got on the scoreboard in their first at-bats, beginning with the Green Devils in the top of the first. Maverick Winkler led off the game with a base hit to center, one of his three hits on the day, and one out later, advanced to second on an infield hit by Hunton Shiveley. Cooper Roush reached on an error to load the bases and the game’s first score came when Evans grounded into a short to second fielder’s choice, bringing Winkler home. A ground out by Carsyn Raines ended the inning and brought the Indians to the plate for the first time.
In the bottom of the first the Tribe tied the score when Bo Johnson led off with line drive single to left and later came home on an RBI ground out to second off the bat of first baseman Nash Grooms.
After giving up first inning runs, both pitchers tossed goose eggs for the next two frames, neither side really threatening. The home team took the lead in the bottom of the fourth with Stephens helping his own cause by blasting a one-out triple to right and scoring the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly off the bat of Colyn Sims. From that point on, it was about the pitching.
Stephens was aided in the top of the fifth by a Shiveley line drive that turned into a double play to end the inning. Peebles got a base hit from Tyler Smith to lead off the bottom of the fifth but he was left stranded. Nothing eventful happened on the basepaths in the sixth inning, leaving the Devils at bat in the top of the seventh, needing one to tie. Stephens was up to the task, getting Cash Hupp on a fly ball to right, striking out Paxton West looking and then retiring Kyser Swayne on a ground out to shortstop to wrap up the Indians’ sixth conference win of the spring, by the slimmest 2-1 margin.
Throwing a complete game five-hitter, Braylen Stephens evened his record on the season at 2-2 and lowered his earned run average to 1.89. For North Adams, Trace Evans went six, allowed just four hits and two runs as he fell to 2-3 on the season with a 3.80 ERA.
As this edition went to press, the Indians stood 6-2 in conference play, right behind Whiteoak’s 7-2, but the Tribe faced the SHAC’s toughest test on Tuesday, a match up on the road with the Lynchburg-Clay Mustangs, the top team in the big school division. After that, Peebles will have four conference games remaining (May 1-Fayetteville, May 5- at Manchester, May 7-Fairfield and May 8- at Whiteoak). With an exciting 3-2 win over Chillicothe at the VA Stadium on Friday, the Tribe moved to 10-6 for the spring.
The loss at Peebles dropped the Green Devils to 6-7 on the season and 6-3 in conference action. A 6-2 loss to Greenfield McLain on Friday left the Devils at 6-8 overall with a trip to Lynchburg looming on Monday afternoon and a home tilt with Manchester on Tuesday.
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