With teammates awaiting his arrival, West Union’s Brandan Cornell, center, touches them all after his second inning home run in Mondays’ game at North Adams. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)

By Mark Carpenter-

The second place hardware in the big school division of the Southern Hills Athletic Conference was on the line on Monday 13, as the North Adams Green Devils and West Union Dragons hooked up for the second time this season. This final regular season game for both teams had been washed out the week previous and was scheduled to be played in West Union, but switched to the drier fields at NAHS, where the baseball fans on hand were treated to an offensive show, as both teams were holding out their top pitchers in anticipation of sectional tournament games two days late.
With the score knotted up at nine in the top of the seventh inning, North Adams’ Zach Osborne struck the game’s decisive blow, blasting a 1-0 pitch from West Union southpaw Dylan Grooms over the left field fence with the bases juiced, a grand slam home run that gave the Devils a 13-9 win and locked up second place in the SHAC’s big school division. The two teams battled back and forth the entire chilly night before the Osborne blast broke the tie, after west Union had taken a 9-8 lead after five innings.
“We were able to compete and come back after falling behind a couple of times,” said North Adams head coach Rob Meade. “I liked the way we maintained our composure. Zach had a solid game, gave us solid pitching and obviously the grand slam was huge. Dalton Gardner was big for us, contributing three hits from the top of the lineup and we had big run-scoring hits from Evan Whalen and R.J. Taylor at the other end of the lineup.”
After the Devils scored the first run of the game in the top of the second, the Dragons quickly tied things up when Brandan Cornell took the first pitch he saw from Devils’ starter Seth Meade and deposited a no-doubter over the left field fence to tie the game at 1 and the offenses just took off from there against a combined seven pitchers from both teams.
The Devils put up a three-spot in the top of the third, but the Dragons answered with four in the bottom half to take their first lead of the game. Back came North Adams in the top of the fourth to score four of their own to go up 8-5, but West Union clawed back with one in the fourth and three in the fifth to retake the lead at 9-8.
In the top of the sixth, an RBI ground out by Whalen tied the game at 9 apiece, setting up Osborne’s heroics in the top half of the seventh. Coach Meade did go to one of his aces, senior Elijah Young, in the bottom of the seventh and he set down the Dragons in order, getting Clayton Madden on a ground ball to shortstop for the final out as the Devils improved to 17-6 on the year and sewed up second place in the big school behind champion Lynchburg with a 9-4 conference mark.
Besides hitting the game-winning dinger, Osborne was also the winning pitcher in the game, pitching 2 2/3 in relief and allowing just one earned run. Gardner led the offense with three hits,scored three times, and stole two bases. For West Union, the only multi-hit performer was left fielder Zane Kingsolver, who went 2 for 3 and scored three runs.
Both teams were at home in sectional play, with the Dragons (12-11) dropping a 10-3 decision to Valley to end their 2019 season, while the Devil advanced with a 2-0 blanking of Eastern Pike to improve to 18-6.

A seventh inning grand slam by North Adams’ Zach Osborne was the difference in a 13-9 Green Devils win over West Union on May 13. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)