Lynchburg gift-wraps legion baseball win for Danville Post 325

It was a game that Danville Post 325 had no business winning. And yet, somehow it did — beating Lynchburg Post 16 by a score of 5-4 in extra innings on Sunday at Dan Daniel Park.

Post 16 pitcher Rudy Staton turned in a solid performance, allowing only two hits over his first seven innings of work. And the Lynchburg bats were lively too, banging out 11 hits. But Post 16 also stranded eight base runners and committed eight defensive errors to sink its own ship.

So much so that in the end, the mind-boggling realization wasn’t how did Danville (14-4, 3-1 District 10) won the game, but rather how Lynchburg managed to give it away.

“The bottom line is, wow,” Danville coach John Bailey said. “You’ve heard coaches before say you win some games you aren’t supposed to…”

He later added: “We dodged many, many, many, many, many bullets.”

While it didn’t take long for those bullets to start flying, at least they were harmless at first.

A pair of Lynchburg (5-8, 2-1 District 10) errors amounted to nothing in the bottom of the first inning. And even though Danville jumped on the board with one hit and two walks resulting in an early 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second, Post 16 came storming back over the next two innings — churning out seven hits for a 3-1 edge heading into the bottom of the fourth.

And then things just got ugly.

Two more Lynchburg miscues in the bottom of the fourth led to as many Danville runs, as Post 325 evened the score at 3-3, and did so again in at 4-4 in the bottom of the seventh thanks to Lynchburg’s eighth error of the game.

“What can you say? There’s nothing really to say,” Post 16 coach Chris England said. “Just look at the scoreboard and you know why you lost the game. It’s no secret.

“Any time in any game at any level, when you make that many mistakes you can’t expect to win a ballgame.”

Nor would he.

A makeup from late June, Sunday’s game was only scheduled for seven innings. But Lynchburg’s errors had left the two teams in that 4-4 tie at the end of regulation, and in the bottom of the eighth inning Staton finally cracked.

Staton had weathered his defense’s blunders remarkably well up until that point. He had allowed only two hits, and while three of his four runs allowed technically met the definition of “earned,” he was really only at fault for the one that Danville had scraped together in the second inning.

“(Staton) was pitching the ball well, keeping them off-balance and they were having a tough time putting the bat on the ball,” England said.

But that all changed in the bottom of the eighth inning, as Post 325’s Zach Harrelson led off with a single to center, which was then followed a sacrifice bunt by Scott Norris that pushed the potential game-winning run to second base.

Staton induced a fly ball to left for out No. 2 in the inning. But after plunking Cody Westmoreland to put men on first and second, it all fell apart against Danville shortstop Cody Holder — who blooped the second pitch he saw in between converging defenders in shallow right and drove in Harrelson for the winning run.

“I haven’t really had that much on my shoulders in a while, but I’ll take what I can get,” Holder said. “(Staton) jammed me on the hands, a fastball on the hands, and I got a hold of it somehow.

“I was lucky, I know that. All it was, was luck.”

No kidding.