By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
LEXINGTON — Both coaches agreed: It was the rain. No question. That was the difference in this one.
First-year Highlands Coach Brian Benzinger wasn’t sure he should even say it after his Bluebirds’ 6-5 heart-wrenching, stomach-churning loss to South Warren in two extra innings in the opening round of the Clark’s Pump-and-Shop Baseball State Tournament Friday at UK’s Kentucky Proud Park.
“This team does not need excuses,” Benzinger said of his 27-8-1 Ninth Region champs, “so I’ll make one for them.”
Blame the rain.
“It is what it is,” he said of the rain-delayed start that hit again in the second inning with lightning and showers that sent players and fans running for shelter and shut the game down for another hour.
Benzinger was surprised to learn that South Warren Coach Chris Gage did not disagree, concluding after some postgame discussion that his Spartans were, indeed, “saved by the weather.”
Without the delay, and down 4-1 barely into the second with neither of his pitchers having any success against the Bluebirds’ lineup, his Spartans do not win this game, Gage said.
For one simple reason. During the rain delay, his No. 1 starter, senior Mikey Coradini, who had been ruled out of this game because of a left shoulder injury in his throwing arm, came up to him and “said he could pitch,” Gage said.
And when the weather delay ended, there was the crafty lefty with the changing speeds out on the mound and shutting Highlands down in an inning where the Birds could have broken this game wide open. Brooks Hendrix, Highlands’ biggest offensive threat after going three-for-four in this game with a game-tying home run in the seventh, was 90 feet away at third for a 5-1 lead.
But Coradini got the next two batters on a strikeout and a checked-swing ground out and kept Highlands close enough.
“Our goal was to get Brooks home . . . we didn’t,” Benzinger said. “The whole dynamic of the game changed. If we score Brooks there, that makes it 5-1.” And South Warren would have been in a world of hurt, down four runs in the second inning.
But they weren’t. And they knew it, Pecking away for two runs in the fourth, another each in the fifth and sixth, the Spartans took the lead against a Highlands’ pitching staff not nearly as sharp as they were in last week’s regional when all three starters pitched complete games.
On this day, Highlands needed all three starters for this one game as weird stuff, like starter Jake Robinson hitting five batters in his 3.1 innings, kept happening to give South Warren baserunners.
And Coradini (10-1) kept making life tough for the Highlands’ hitters who had to rely on Hendrix, who may well be the best hitter in the state after his three-hit day here to give him 55 for the year, second-most in the state, to blast a game-tying home run over the left field fence to tie this one at 5-5 and send it into extra innings.
But no more scoring for a Highlands’ crew that used leadoff hitter Nolan Schwalbach and third-hitter Adam Forton with No. 2 hitter Hendrix to score its first four runs, but was shut down in extra innings.
Not so for South Warren, the home team, that got a double and a single in the ninth to get Jaxen Decker to third with one out before Gray Pearson drove a sacrifice fly to deep left, scoring Decker easily with the winning run for the 31-8 Spartans who will meet McCracken County in a 1 p.m. quarterfinal game Sunday at 1 p.m.
Coradini’s work was especially impressive, his coach said, because it came against a Highlands’ “team that can really punch it.”
For a Highlands’ team that hadn’t made the state tournament the last seven years after getting to the championship game twice and racking up a 7-3 record in the state tournament the last decade, this wasn’t the plan.
“But it did feel good,” Benzinger said of getting here. But the plan was to stay. “I know how much these kids love baseball. They feel like they can play with anybody.”
But now, thanks to the rain that helped South Warren and hurt Highlands, they won’t get to.
SCORING SUMMARY
HIGHLANDS 310 000 100—5 10 0
SOUTH WARREN 100 211 001—6 11 1
WP: Coradini (10-1) LP: Forton (7-2)
Leading hitters: Highlands: Hendrix 3-4, double, HR, 2 RBI; Schwalbach 2-5, double; Forton, double, 2 RBI; Carner, 1-5, RBI; South Warren: Green 3-5, double; Rardin 2-2, 2 RBI; Decker, 2-5, double; Croghan 1-5, RBI; Fentress 1-5, double, RBI.
