Miller’s Thomas Stallings and Charlottesville’s Dale Richardson were arguably the two best hitters for their respective schools this spring, but on Monday they stepped up to the plate as Albemarle Post 74’s seventh and eighth hitters. While Albemarle didn’t have any trouble getting runners on in its first two innings, it did struggle early on to plate them – that is until Stallings and Richardson broke the game open in the third and fourth.
“We’ve had a lot of success with the bottom of the order this year,” said Albemarle coach Mike Maynard. “We’ve got a lot of good hitters there, so it’s not your normal bottom of the order. We’re hitting third and fourth hitters from high school teams so it spread out our order really, really well. Those guys hit really well tonight.”
Between the third and fourth innings, the two hitters accounted for five RBI to put Post 74 up by a healthy margin on King George Post 89. With the rest of the lineup coming to life, Albemarle piled it on and more than survived a ninth inning rally from King George to win 13-7.
Albemarle’s Logan Forloines put his team up 1-0 on a sacrifice fly in the first inning, but Post 74 still left five runners on the basepaths between the first and second innings.
“They kept us off balance early and kept us from getting that first hit,” Maynard said. “But once we got it, hitting is so contagious on this team.”
Sheldon Shifflett came through for Albemarle with an RBI single with two outs. In the next at bat, Stallings came through with an RBI double to make it 3-0, but there would be plenty more in the fourth.
“I was looking for a fast ball there and got one on the inner half of the plate,” Stallings said. “All I had to do was put a good swing on it. Lately I’ve been trying to do too much so I just wanted to put the ball in play.”
After three walks to start the fourth, Sean Rutherford brought home Eli Haden on a ground-out double play. Two batters later, Forloines cranked a double to score Danny Morris. Stallings then drew a bases loaded walk to set up Albemarle’s biggest hit of the night. With two outs, Richardson cleared the bases with a hard hit double to make it an 9-0 game.
“As a team we just have to get on base and let the next man do his job, trust your teammates,” Richardson said. “That’s how we get our runs.”
Albemarle starter Joey Varaksa threw three scoreless innings. Varaksa saw King George put six runners on bases in all three innings that he pitched, but escaped unharmed each time and collected the victory.
“That’s what we talked about after the game was not scoring the runs early,” said King George coach Al Landino. “We come through there and don’t make a few throwing errors and then maybe you’re looking at an 8-7 game which is where you want to be.”
Post 89 got on the board in the fifth with a 3-run double from Carroll, who then scored himself on an error to trim the deficit almost in half.
Albemarle reestablished its lead in the fifth with Danny Morris providing an RBI single, Rutherford scoring on an error and Ryan Morris picking up an RBI single of his own.
In the bottom of the seventh, Albemarle flirted with a run ruling thanks to single from Forloines, a walk to Kevin White, a passed ball and then an RBI groundout from David Spinosa. With White at third and needing just one run, Post 74 had to finish the job the old fashioned way.
King George rallied in the top of the ninth to trim Albemarle’s lead from nine to six with 3-run home run from Theodore Klopsis. However, Post 74 closed the two quickly thereafter.
Albemarle will travel to play Lynchburg Post 16 on Wednesday.
