Top 5: Washington completes comeback for the ages

Published 4:00 pm Thursday, December 26, 2019

In the last week of 2019, The Washington Daily News will run a recap of the Top-5 sports stories of the year that most affected the community. The No. 4 story is Washington’s miraculous 2-A baseball playoff comeback against division-foe Ayden-Grifton in the second-round.

On May 10 of 2019, the undeniably greatest comeback of the 2019 season of any sport came from the Pam Pack erasing a 12-3 deficit against Ayden-Grifton to defeat the Chargers 13-12 in the second-round of the NCHSAA playoffs.

This group didn’t quit. After giving up nine runs in the third inning, things looked bleak for the Pam Pack. Washington scratched a couple of runs across in the third inning, only for them to be answered by Ayden-Grifton in the top of the fifth.

In the top of the fifth with no outs, Pam Pack pitcher Tyler Rowe came into the game and did a fantastic job. He pitched the remaining three innings without allowing a single run, which opened the door for the miraculous.

The comeback was on. In the bottom of the fifth, the Pam Pack were able to get a couple of big hits from Jeremiah Moore and Robert Pollock’s doubles to cut the deficit to 12-5.

“They tell me I have a clutch gene,” Moore said, who had a three-RBI game and continues to stay hot at the plate. “So I guess I’ll just go along with it; I have a clutch gene.”

In the sixth, it was Pollock again with a long fly ball that hit the top of the wall. Pollock’s pinch runner would score on Will Crisp’s two-RBI double and continued to chip away at the lead.

In the seventh, an infield single was followed by a bloop single from Wilson Peed that got the crowd into it. Ayden-Grifton brought in two different pitchers in the inning to try to stop the rally, but it almost seemed like destiny for the Pam Pack to win it.

“Games like this is where it counts, I had to come out of (my slump). It comes from the heart; I had to come out and support my boys,” Peed said. “This could’ve been my last game, man.”

A walk loaded the bases, and a balk scored another run. On the ensuing at-bat, Logan Everette crushed a two-RBI double to right-center field to make the score 12-11. After a couple of long foul balls, Hunter Hall got a hold of one and ripped it down the third-base line to tie the game.

“We just kept scoring. We got the fans into it, and that just hyped us up even more,” Hall said.

The Chargers didn’t record a single out in the frame, and Pollock polished it off with a walk-off single to right field to score the game-winning run.

“Everything in that last inning felt good, I was just glad we could keep the season going,” Pollock said. “I don’t think I’ll ever (be a part of a win like that) again. That was a once in a lifetime game.”

Pollock finished 3-for-5 with three RBIs.

Pam Pack head coach Kevin Leggett said he’d never been a part of something like that in his coaching career.

“Nothing anything close,” Leggett said. “That’s up there past winning a conference championship to see a team fight like that. They never gave up, we fought the whole night.”

The Pam Pack lost quite a few seniors from the 2019 club, but Leggett will have his team ready to go by February for the 2020 season.