Playing in its fifth straight American Legion District 13 championship game, and for the first time in three years against a team other than Spotsylvania Post 320, Albemarle Post 74 earned another trip to the Virginia Legion State Tournament by edging King George Post 89 in a game that unfortunately featured more walks and errors than big hits.
“We were very fortunate to win tonight because we didn’t play all that well but we had a few hits to get us some runs and their pitching was a bit wild so it got us a lot of base runners,” said Albemarle coach Mike Maynard. “But that’s one of the worst defensive games we’ve played all year and if we play like that in the state tournament we’ll be done in two games. Hopefully we’ll play better when we get to the tournament. I’m not sure what it was about tonight. But we won the game, that’s the important part and we had a couple of guys like Kyle Vidano and Trey Lam really step up for us.”
The visitors and needing to beat Albemarle twice to earn the state bid, King George got off to a good start manufacturing a pair of runs in the top of the first starting with a leadoff single from Jacob Roberts, a sacrifice bunt and an RBI single from Dylan Dombrowskas. An RBI fielder’s choice three batters later made it 2-0.
Albemarle threatened in the top of the first but didn’t get on board until the second starting with a leadoff walk to Austin Batten, a stolen base and an RBI double from Josh Gibson. Post 74 loaded the bases after that with one out, but Post 89 worked out of the jam with a pop-fly and groundball to the right side of the infield.
In the top fourth King George went up 3-1 on a pair of errors, a fielder’s choice, a hit batter and finally an RBI fielder’s choice from Rory Smith.
The bottom of the fourth saw Albemarle answer to take the lead. To start, Post 74 got a bases loaded walk. Then with two outs Kyle Vidano hit a high chopper up the middle and reached safely on a throwing error to bring home a pair of runs and make it 4-3.
“Everything I hit went to short today so I was keeping an eye on and I think it just hit a lip and bounced over,” Vidano said. “I think that kind of broke it open for us a bit. We didn’t look back much after that.”
King George tied things up at 4-4 in the fifth when Dombrowskas singled and brought in on an RBI double from Will Shifflett.
Albemarle reclaimed the 1-run lead in the bottom of the sixth when Dillard drew a 1-out walk, reached third on a wild pitch and scored when Vidano again reached base on an error.
The see saw battle continued with Post 89 evening the score in the top of the seventh thanks to a hit batter and an RBI single from Shifflett. But the pivotal moment in the game came shortly after when King George made a base running miscue and got caught between third and home with two outs. Catcher Connor Lilley absorbed a solid hit at the plate in the pickle, but emerged from the collision ball in hand to end the inning keep the game tied.
“He came in hard and I think it was a pretty clean play to be honest,” Lilley said, however the plate umpire ejected the runner ruling that he made no attempt at the plate. “But in the end I just held on. It was definitely huge momentum play for us. The guys got fired up and we were focused after that. I think we were sleepwalking through things a bit until that point.”
After that, Albemarle tacked on three runs in the seventh as King George’s struggle to throw strikes reached its climax. A walk, back-to-back singles from Gibson and A.J. Willy and then three consecutive walks made it suddenly 8-5.
With Austin Turner throwing the first four innings, A.J. Willy providing two and a third innings of relief, Trey Lamb got into a rhythm to close out the game by retiring eight of the last 11 King George batters and striking out four to preserve the win.
Albemarle will head to Williamsburg on Tuesday July 30. In the double elimination tournament, Post 74 has reached the last round of play twice in this current run of district titles. Albemarle came one win away from winning the whole tournament in 2009.
