Joey Fry
Columbus North’s nine-game winning streak came to an end Wednesday night.
East Central rallied for two runs in the sixth inning and two more in the seventh to come away with a 4-2 baseball win at Southside Elementary.
With the Class 4A co-No. 5 Bull Dogs in the middle of a stretch playing eight games in nine days, North went deep into the starting rotation. Joey Fry took the bump for the Bull Dogs and pitched five solid innings that included retiring the first 11 batters.
Unfortunately for North, it couldn’t string hits together to give him run support. Fry went six innings and allowed two runs on three hits with six strikeouts.
“Joey threw well enough for us to win. We didn’t get the hits we needed, we didn’t get the breaks when we needed them and we let them hang around for way too long,” North coach Mike Bodart said. “When you do that with a good ball club like East Central, that’s what they’re going to do. They’re going to find a way to manufacture a run. We knew what was coming. They got lead batter on with a walk (in the sixth inning) and did what they needed to do.”
The Bull Dogs (13-2) got their first run on the board in the third inning when Jayce Emmitt reached first on a leadoff single. After a wild pitch advanced him to second, Emmitt went to third on a grounder to first. Sam Perry then slapped a grounder to third base. With Emmitt running home, the third baseman hurried the throw that went well past the catcher to bring home the first run to lead 1-0.
The second run for North came in the bottom of the fourth, when Connor Hensley hit a single, went to second on a groundout and scored on a Lane Schrader single to increase the lead to 2-0.
The Trojans rallied in the top of the sixth when they led off with a walk and a single to put runners on first and second. A.J. Reynolds hit a single to drive in a run and a short grounder to first by Joel Richter plated the tying run to make it 2-2.
East Central had two runners on again via a one-out single and a hit by pitch in the top of the seventh. A sacrifice bunt then advanced the runners to second and third. Moses Wheat then smacked the ball into shallow right field, and Emmitt tried to make a diving catch, but it hit the ground first to score the go-ahead runs.
The Bull Dogs tallied five hits in the contest. Hensley finished 2 for 3, and Emmitt, Perry and Schrader accounted for the other three hits. Schrader came on in relief of Fry in the seventh inning to take the loss.
“Nothing against anything that happened here. It was a baseball game. It was a game of inches, and we just didn’t get anything to fall our way tonight,” Bodart said.
