Van Buren drops bizarre tourney opener to NLR

A wild turn of events extended the coaching career of North Little Rock’s Randy Sandefur in the Class 7A state tournament on Thursday. Right after giving up two unearned runs, the Charging Wildcats scored two unearned runs of their own in the top of the seventh that ended up as the difference in a 3-2 win over Van Buren in the opening round at Rogers Veterans Park. North Little Rock (12-18) advanced to the second round and will play on Friday. All five runs in the game were gifts. North Little Rock broke up a pitcher’s duel in the top half of the sixth. Hayden Henson singled with one out. His courtesy runner, Davis Coleman, moved to second on a wild pitch and scored on a two-out single by John Henry Maloch. In the bottom of the sixth, Van Buren (19-10) took a 2-1 lead with help from North Little Rock. Dakota Peters reached on an infield single to open the inning, and Trevor Johnson followed with a hard single to right. The ball skipped past the right fielder, allowing Peters to score and Johnson to take second. Jackson Hurst hit a routine fly ball to left that was dropped, allowing Hurst to reach and Johnson to take third. Seth Humphrey was walked intentionally, loading the bases. Noah Lipe lined a ball to right toward the line, which Maloch, the right fielder, tracked down. Maloch, though, who seemingly had the ball in his glove, then unbeknownst to most, dropped it. Simon Wheeler, running for Johnson, scored easily from third, but Hurst and Humphrey retreated to their bases, thinking the ball was caught. Maloch picked up the ball quickly and threw to second, where the fielder stepped on the bag and then tagged the runner who was on the base. During all of that, the batter returned to Van Buren’s dugout. “That’s a tough break,” Van Buren head coach David Loyd said. “We battled hard and competed as hard as we could. We made a mistake. Obviously, it went against us. It happens. We’ll move on from it, but it hurts for sure.” Had the fielder tagged the runner on second first, then stepped on the bag coupled with the batter returning to the dugout it would have resulted in a triple play and no second run. Instead, Van Buren led 2-1, but with two outs and a runner only on second. “You’d like to think that with nobody out, we would have gotten some more runs,” Loyd said. “It was some crazy stuff that’s happened to us the last year or two.” It was a bizarre turn of events, going from bases loaded with no outs and the tying run already in to just a one-run lead. “They had runners on first, second and third,” said Sandefur, who is retiring after this season. “Our guy drops the ball. The batter abandons his bag, so he’s out. Then the runner at second is out. I’ve been here for 35 years, and coach Loyd and I are good friends and we’ve had some dandies, but we’ve not had one like this. That one inning, our wheels got wobbly. Then they get a call where they think they didn’t score a run.” After long conference between all three umpires and both head coaches, the umpires first ruled that the second run didn’t count and that the inning was over. North Little Rock left the field before realizing that there should be two outs only and a runner on second. North Little Rock returned to the field, and Grant Shankle’s fly ball ended the inning. “They said the right fielder dropped the ball, and that they threw it into second,” Loyd said. “We didn’t know he dropped the ball. They threw it to second, and he was out on the force. Then the batter abandoned the bag because he thought he caught the ball. We still had the lead, and we weren’t able to finish it there.” Still with the 2-1 lead, Van Buren’s ace hurler, Trevor Johnson, struck out the first batter in the bottom of the seventh inning before Deshaun Cordova dumped a bloop single into short right. Johnson got a fly ball out but reached his 110-pitch limit. Luke Rice singled off reliever Landrey Wilkerson before Bear Sparks hit a high pop up just to the first base side of the pitcher’s mound that dropped. With two outs, Cordova scored easily from second and then Rice scored when a throw to third sailed wide into foul territory all of which allowed North Little Rock to seize a 3-2 lead. “How do you get a second chance on an infield fly to the pitcher,” Sandefur said. “Our guys are running, the music is playing and the circus is in town. It’s a game of second chances. We’re proud to have one. I’m really sorry for those guys over there. They played hard. Their guy on the mound really carved us up, but we kept fighting.” North Little Rock pitcher Grant Shahan finished off a 77-pitch gem by retiring Van Buren in order in the bottom of the seventh. “His pitch limit was down,” Sandefur said. “His off speed stuff was down. We had a halfway decent scouting report on them. We’ve had an up-and-down season, but we’ve never quit. It just shows you in baseball, you don’t ever quit because you don’t know what’s going to happen. We should have never been in that situation. We played a clean game until the sixth inning. Then it’s like Halloween, the music starts playing and the goblins are out.” Johnson struck out eight, walked one and allowed nine singles and one earned run.

THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
Van Buren High School Athletics

VAN BUREN DROPS BIZARRE TOURNEY OPENER TO NLR

LELAND BARCLAY

Times Record | 5/10/2019

PHOTO CREDIT: Brian D. Sanderford