By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
LEXINGTON – Prepare for the unexpected, his fellow Northern Kentucky high school baseball coaches told Ryle’s Joseph Aylor before he headed downstate with his Raiders for Friday’s first-round game against East Carter.
As if.
As if anyone could prepare to lose starting pitcher and staff ace, Sam Eppley, in the second injury to an as-yet-undiagnosed elbow injury that may not be as serious as first feared.
And that’s just for starters. Prepare for what never would, could or should happen because maybe it might, they said. You never know.
Actually, now you do.
After Friday morning’s 4-2 extra inning win over East Carter’s 16th Region champs (22-7), who acted as if they had this one all the way despite just three hits, well, maybe we have seen it all.
But how do you get ready for a game when you have to bring your shortstop in to pitch in the second inning?
Or when you have to sit there as four straight opposing leadoff hitters work your pitchers for walks?
Or when in two of the final four innings in regulation you see this line score for East Carter: No runs, no hits, three left on base? That’s right, those other Raiders – the ones from Grayson – kept filling the bases without a hit. You know, with bases on balls and even a hit batter or two.
Including back-to-back intentional walks to load the bases in a sudden-death bottom of the seventh inning when only a sensational scoop of a one-hop throw at the plate for a force out by catcher Josh Caudill saved the game for Ryle.
Here’s another way to do it. You have guys like Dylan McIntyre, called in with no notice and having to warm up on the mound during the game, who figure any trouble they’re faced with is their deal: “It’s just a situation you got yourself into, you gotta’ get yourself out of,” he said.
And then the junior did just that. Both times with strikeouts, two of his seven for the game.
Then he did something else to get him, and his Ryle teammates, out of this one with a win – the first in Ryle history at the baseball state tournament.
After singling in the first and scoring the game’s first run, No. 3 hitter McIntyre repeated that feat in the first extra inning, singling and then giving way to a pinch-runner who would score the go-ahead run on Caleb Mann’s sharp two-out shot to right field to make it 4-2.
That’s when Mann, as is the Ryle way, stepped in to close things out in the bottom of the eighth. Which was the more satisfying, Mann was asked: the game-winning base hit after taking a couple of called third strikes or the closing effort on the mound.
“The win with all these guys, that was more fun,” Mann said. Asked to stay around after the game for interviews, Mann said: “We’re going to be here for a while.”
They will if they can continue to close out the way they did Friday after some shakiness early. “A hell of an effort,” Aylor told his guys. “Way to stick with it.”
Which was the key. After five innings, Ryle was trailing, 2-1, to a team that had just half the hits that Ryle had – three to Ryle’s six. But the Raiders kept scrambling, scoring the game-tying run in the sixth on a delayed double steal in an inning where they didn’t get a hit but got catcher Caudill sliding across the plate on the perfectly executed play.
And that was something they do work on, Aylor said. “We knew we’d have to put pressure on them.” And they had just one more inning to do so. So that’s what they did.
But all the planning and practice in the world doesn’t get you ready for everything, Aylor noted. Like the curve ball from East Carter’s ace, Andrew Tomolonis (9-3), who came into the game with 79 strikeouts and added 11 more on Ryle hitters out front or getting caught taking the third strike on his breaking ball.
“Tip your cap to him,” Aylor said even though by the finish, Ryle had reached double figures at the plate with 10 hits led by two each from McIntyre, Olli Morris and sophomore AJ Curry, tied for the state lead in hitting at .580.
So as Mann promised, Ryle will be “here for a while.” They were here for Simon Kenton’s Thursday game and will be here Saturday at 1:30 to face McCracken County, whose 32-9 record is the same as Ryle’s in this meeting of two of the state’s largest high schools – and relatively new ones at that. McCracken County, from just west of Paducah in farthest western Kentucky, beat West Jessamine, 3-2, in another Friday squeaker.
Ryle is currently the state’s third-largest school with an enrollment of 2,066. MaCracken is No. 5 with 1,966. And with a big-time program from recently consolidated schools Heath, Lone Oak and Reidland high schools – all with serious sports traditions — McCracken’s Mustangs have a schedule that includes all the Louisville powers plus teams from Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina this year.
SCORING SUMMARY
RYLE 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 – 4 10 1
EAST CARTER 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 – 2 3 2
WP: McIntyre (6-0) LP: Tomolonis (9-3)
LEADING HITTERS: Ryle: McIntyre 2-4, Olli Morris 2-4, RBI; Mann 2 RBI.