Ringgold’s Zach Morris pitches against Cartersville on Wednesday.RINGGOLD, Ga. – There’s a reason established high school baseball coaches load their nonregion schedules with elite competition. It may blot the record a bit, but when crunch time hits a battle-tested team will know how to respond.
Cartersville, the defending Class AAA champions who started the season 2-7, proved the validity of that approach Wednesday by rallying from four runs down to defeat Ringgold, 5-4. The win puts the Purple Hurricanes (14-8, 10-1) within one win of clinching the region title, while Ringgold (16-6, 9-2) must win once more to earn the No. 2 playoff seed.
The Tigers jumped on the visitors with a single run in the first on Logan Baldwin’s RBI single and three more in the third when Zach Morris hit a three-run homer. However, the bats went silent as Cartersville reliever Garrett Rutledge kept his team in the game and was rewarded with the win as the ‘Canes won on Brent Arnold’s sixth-inning three-run homer.
“It was a closely-matched game,” a disappointed Ringgold coach Brent Tucker said. “We had a couple of opportunities to put more runs on the board, but we didn’t get it done. Cartersville is such a good team that when you’ve got them you have to keep adding runs because they’re going to make their run. It was an emotional game and we have another one tomorrow at Adairsville, so we have to get over it as soon as we get on the bus.”
Ringgold starter Baldwin had the ‘Canes eating our of his hand early, facing the minimum through three innings. A wild pitch scored Clifton Dempsey with Cartersville’s first run in the fourth and a two-out infield error made it a 4-2 game in the fifth, but Baldwin escaped and left the bases loaded.