Houston County tries to keep postseason magic alive on road

If Houston County can win four more baseball games and take home the trophy as the GHSA Class AAAAA champion for the second time in three seasons, no doubt “The Seventh Inning” will become legendary.

In the seventh inning of Houston County’s second game of the playoff series against visiting Columbus on Tuesday, amazing things happened.

A pinch-hitter who had yet to actually get a hit in a pinch came to the plate with two runners in scoring position and two outs.

Ryan Milton was 0-for-10, but he had reached base seven times by walk or getting hit.

He made contact, his monstrous chopper to short too tough to handle, which allowed two runs to come in and tie the game.

Chandler Ring took to the mound in the bottom half of the inning, his third appearance of the season, the first two involving nine hits and eights runs.

A walk, groundout, sacrifice, walk and hit batter loaded the bases with two outs. Ring then hit Jack Copley for what would have ended the game, but it was ruled that Copley leaned into the pitch, so it was a dead ball, no pitch.

Seconds later, he flied out. And within 19 minutes, Houston County had won, 8-7 in eight innings.

And that’s part of how the Bears (25-7) got to Monday’s semifinal matchup with regular semifinalist Gainesville, at Ivey-Watson Field on the shores of a Lake Lanier inlet.

The latest part of the journey still has head coach Jason Brett shaking his head a little bit.

“I don’t have an answer for it,” he said. “Other than I trust the kids. They’ve worked, and they’re going to compete.

“In that second game against Columbus, we had to rely on a lot of kids that we haven’t had to rely on to that point.”

But Brett isn’t necessarily surprised that Milton and Ring came through like they did.

“We try to work and prepare the kids as best as possible,” said Brett, in his seventh year. “We keep preaching to them that ‘your time is going to come, and when your time gets here, you’ve got to know that you’ve been prepared, and take advantage of it.’ That’s what we did.

“It’s a testament to them being prepared and ready to do their job.”

The Bears came back twice that night to win, scoring three in the bottom of the seventh to win the first game 5-4.

Certainly a feeling of destiny was on the bus when the team rode up Sunday.

Adding to what will already be a highly amped series is one guarantee: the winner is at home in the championship series, against either Loganville or South Effingham.

Gainesville won five state titles from 1996-2002, but none since then. The Red Elephants, however, are in their fourth semifinal in the past five seasons.

The Bears will bring a team of deep pitching and fundamentals to Gainesville (28-5), where they won two seasons ago in this round.

“They swing the bat real well,” Brett said. “They run the bases very aggressively, a very offensive-minded team.

“They play with a little bit of swagger.”

Houston County won a three-game series at Ivey-Watson two years ago.

Only Jake Fromm, Blake Dawson and Tanner Hall remain from that team, although Brett said most players were on hand for that series, as well as the championship round at Whitewater.

Brett said Gainesville is similar to Columbus — and that was certainly the roller coaster series — in how it approaches things at the plate, and is steady if not flashy.

Gainesville needed three games to get past Dalton, winning the first game 7-1 and third game 12-8, with Dalton winning game two 11-7. So the Red Elephants outscored the Catamounts 26-20 while the Bears were involved in yet another set of tight games.

Sam Carpenter got the win in that first game, throwing 92 pitches and striking out five and getting out of jams in two middle innings. He also had a homer in the second game, and he got on base in five trips in the doubleheader.

Banks Griffith and Jack Langford each had three hits in the series finale.

The loss broke a 12-game winning streak that included a four-game stretch where the Red Elephants outscored opponents 56-0.

Austin Hittinger, DL Hall and Tanner Hall lead the Bears, each hitting above .350.

The Halls and Tony Locey make up the three starting pitchers.

Houston County didn’t make the playoffs a year ago, failing to get out of the Region 2-AAAAA tournament.

So a pair of hungry teams with something to prove will battle.

“I tell the kids it’s not the big things, it’s not the hitting and (basic) fielding, that type stuff, that’s going to lose these games,” Brett said. “It’s going to be the mental preparation. It’s going to be the small details.

“We don’t want to beat ourselves. If we handle what we do and don’t beat ourselves, I feel like we can beat anybody in the state.”