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Cathedral third base coach Andrew Beesley, left, talks to junior Jack Lewis while chaos breaks out in the fourth inning. Lewis said he was told to stay focused on the task at hand. He would draw a walk and would help keep a rally going as Cathedral scored five runs in the inning and five more in the fifth to win 11-1 Thursday night. (Hunter Cloud | The Natchez Democrat)

 

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AC head coach Jake Winston argues a call with an umpire in the bottom of the third inning of the Rebels game against Cathedral Thursday night. In the fourth inning, the tension boiled over as coaches received warnings and headmaster David King was ejected. AC lost 11-1 after giving up five runs in the fourth and fifth innings. (Hunter Cloud | The Natchez Democrat)

 

Cooler heads prevail

Green Wave takes game one of series with Rebels

By Hunter Cloud 

The Natchez Democrat

NATCHEZ — Cathedral took the first game of their rivalry series against Adams County Christian School Thursday night. They scored five runs in the fourth and five in the fifth to win 11-1 in an intense game. 

The game was moved to Thursday night after rains soaked the field Tuesday. Wednesday, AC’s field was not dry enough to play on, and even Thursday night, there was still a lot of mud and some standing water. 

Green Wave junior Jack Lewis said the team was ready to play their cross-town rival when they took the field. Cathedral opened the scoring with an RBI single by Noah Russ. 

“We wanted to beat them. We were hyped up, and we did our job,” Lewis said. “Our goal was to continuously put runs up and never let up until we had a comfortable lead.”

Helter skelter innings

Tension in the game started to bubble up as Conor Aplin was thrown out on a stolen base attempt at second base in the third inning. If he had been safe, the Rebels would have had men at second and third with one out. 

AC Head Coach Jake Winston ran out of the dugout to argue the call with the umpire. A few pitches later, Cathedral Head Coach Craig Beesley came out to argue about why the home plate umpire called a pitch a strike and changed his mind and called it a ball. 

In the fourth inning, an umpire called a Green Wave runner safe on what Winston believed was an out. “It was on the transfer,” he said from the dugout before having another discussion with the umpire. 

The next at-bat, Jake Maples hit a flyball over the head of Hayes Marchbanks and scored a run to give Cathedral a 2-1 lead. One of the AC assistants said something, and the umpire gave a verbal warning. 

AC headmaster David King went onto the field and told the umpire he would take care of the dugout and coaches. Things escalated from there as King got in a heated argument with the umpire and it appeared King was ejected from the game when the umpire said “you’re out of here,” and turned to security to escort King off the field.. King left the field and could not be seen in the ballpark from that point forward.

However, on Friday assigning secretary James Lee reached out to The Democrat and said the umpires gave King a warning to get back in the dugout as a first ejection motion. Umpires must make two ejection motions for someone to be officially ejected from the game.

Lee said there was not a second ejection motion made for King so no one was technically ejected from the game.

In the midst of the argument,, Green Wave’s Lewis and third base coach Andrew Beesley had a meeting away from the chaos. Lewis then stepped up to the plate and drew a walk. Cathedral strung together four more runs in the inning after his at-bat. 

“He was just telling me to stay focused. Let’s put some more runs on, and don’t worry about all of that,” Lewis said. “He was just telling me to not let it distract me from my at-bat. It helped me keep my mindset. I felt like we weren’t moving as fast as we wanted to. Once we got the runs going, it went to 6-1. We kept going from there, and the hitting got hot.” 

AC walked seven Green Wave batters and made three errors. Only three of the 11 runs scored by Cathedral were earned. Cathedral had four errors, but the runs scored in the fourth and fifth inning made the difference. 

Moving forward, AC needs to play as a team, Winston said. 

“The great thing about baseball is tomorrow is a new day. It will be another opportunity to win a game,” Winston said. “We are letting the game speed up. We have to slow the game down and not let the moment get too big. We have to play together as a team. We have to become a ball club if we want to win this year. These guys have to come together and play as a team.”