Chalk yet another one up to Mother Nature, the most dominant force in this baseball season.
With snowflakes fluttering down from the first inning on, Indian Creek and Greenwood did their best to squeeze in the final first-round game of the Johnson County Baseball Tournament on Friday, but field conditions rapidly worsened and the game was called in the bottom of the third inning.
Greenwood athletics director Rob Irwin said he expects the game to resume April 23, when the Woodmen and Braves have a regular-season game already scheduled. When it does, Indian Creek will have a 4-0 lead and Greenwood will be up to bat with runners on first and second base and nobody out.
“We’ve got to get ourselves out of a little jam here,” Braves coach Steve Mirizzi said, “but I like the fact that we do have the lead.”
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryIndian Creek struggled to hit Greenwood starter T.J. Bass early, but the Braves were able to get to him in the third. Jared DeHart drew a one-out walk, stole second and then scored on a fielder’s choice gone bad that put Wyatt Phillips on second.
Phillips took third on a passed ball and then scored when Dustin Sprong reached on another Woodmen error. Dawson Read followed with an RBI double — the Braves’ first hit — and scored on a Cody Grider single.
“The weather obviously played into that,” Greenwood coach Andy Bass said, “but also, they played in the same conditions and hit the ball. So we’ve got work to do, but we’ve put up four-spots before.”
While neither side is particularly thrilled about having to wait more than two weeks to finish the contest, both coaches agreed that continuing Friday would have been a bad idea.
“It got sloppy out there; the mound was in bad shape,” Mirizzi said. “So at this point, it was just about keeping our guys healthy and not getting anybody hurt out there.”
On the other side of the county bracket, Franklin is slated to play a semifinal game at Edinburgh next Monday.
