HAMILTON — A sweat-stained Jay King flipped the game ball to coach Josh Dowdy as he moved toward the field.
Dowdy looked at it and didn’t hesitate to toss it back to King.
Deservedly so.
With one more effort like the one King delivered Friday night, the Bruce High School baseball team will earn a chance to play for a North State title.
King regrouped after a slow start and went the distance and drove in the go-ahead run to help push Bruce past Hamilton 13-6 in game one of their best-of-three Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 2A North State playoff series.
“He is our guy,” Dowdy said. “Here is the ball. It is yours to lose. That is how we have been all year, and that is how we were last weekend. He is the type of kid who has a lot of heart and he wants the ball.”
Bruce (18-8) will try to close the series at 7 p.m. Saturday when it plays host to Hamilton (17-10-1) in game two. If Hamilton wins, the series will shift back to Hamilton at 6:30 p.m. Monday for a winner-take-all game three.
King put the Trojans in a position not to have to come back to the Lions’ den. After giving up three runs in the second inning to fall behind 4-2, King admitted he was overthrowing and that he didn’t have his best stuff.
Already with an aching shoulder from a fall the day before in practice, the senior right-hander opted to take some off of his fastball. The decision helped him locate his pitches better and enabled him to pitch a complete-game eight-hitter.
Pitching in big games is nothing new to King. Dowdy said King asked for the ball and got it a second time in Bruce’s second-round series against Simmons. King didn’t disappoint by earning his second victory in the series to push the Trojans forward.
King also showed the same tenacity at the plate Friday. With the game tied at 5 in the fifth inning, Bruce capitalized on a throwing error to move a runner to third with two outs. King didn’t allow starter Ethan Earnest to wiggle out of the jam as he singled back up the middle to give the Trojans a lead they didn’t relinquish.
“He wasn’t throwing his breaking ball for strikes very well,” Hamilton coach Lewis Earnest said of Ethan’s effort. “It wasn’t one of his better nights. He just wasn’t sharp. If you don’t throw real hard, you better be sharp, and he wasn’t real sharp. he struggled getting he breaking ball over. It wasn’t as tight as usual. That is the way it was. It was one of those nights.”
King said he felt his complete-game effort was more satisfying than getting the hit that put the Trojans ahead. Part of the reason may be that he knew he didn’t have his best stuff and that he had to dig down and regroup after falling behind.
King also had to put the pain he felt in his right shoulder out of his mind. He said he fell rounding a base and landed on the shoulder. He felt overcoming that pain was a mental hurdle he had to put out of his mind.
“My shoulder wasn’t bothering me too bad (after practice),” King said. “This morning when I woke up it just started hurting worse. I was going (to pitch regardless). I didn’t notice it (during the game). Sometimes when I dropped down to the side it hurt some, so I tried to stay away from that.”
Bruce broke the game open in the sixth. A leadoff single and a walk ended Earnest’s evening on the mound. Taylor Shoemake greeted reliever Clay Atkins with an RBI single. Jake Yarbrough followed with a two-run double that made it 9-5. A throwing error and a two-run single by Chase Clark accounted for the final runs before Cole Robinson replaced Atkins and escaped more damage with an inning-ending double play.
“Everybody contributed and did their job,” King said. “That just gives you confidence, and baseball is a game of confidence. I think it is going to help us a lot. We saw their best pitcher, and he didn’t make it the whole game, so I think it is going to help in terms of momentum.”
Hamilton got one run back in the bottom half of the inning thanks to a triple by Hayden Gill and a run-scoring groundout by Cojuante McMillian. But King remained in control. It was only fitting he fielded a comebacker by Kyle Dahlem and ran the ball over to first base himself to record the final out of the game.
“I thought we put the ball in play pretty decent against him,” coach Earnest said. “What we didn’t do a good job of was defense, throwing the ball away, making bad throws, and giving away outs. … You just can’t give away outs to a good team. They’re going to take advantage, and that’s what they did. It kind of snowballed on us and it got out of control pretty quick.”
Earnest said his team needs to find a way to bounce back to keep its season alive. Gill, a senior, likely will start tonight.
“I told them I feel like they deserved to beat us that bad,” Earnest said. “We don’t make the mistakes, we’re in a close game and we have a chance to win. We have to forget the past and go on. We have one more tomorrow and we have to win it.”
King hopes that isn’t the case. He might not get a chance to flip Dowdy the ball Saturday if the Trojans eliminate the Lions, but he hopes one of his teammates can earn that honor.
“It meant a lot (to have Dowdy flip the ball back to him),” said King, who did the same thing after game three of the Simmons series, only to have Dowdy return it to him. “This is a really big win for us, so I am going to hold on to it for as long as I can.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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