Thanks to Coosa Pines Federal Credit Union for sponsoring our coverage this season.<\/p>\n
By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor<\/p>\n
HOOVER \u2013 As a deep fly ball blasted toward Joe Cross in center field, he caught it for the final out of Game 1 and sent the Spain Park Jaguars into a frenzy. The bench cleared for a jubilant mob at first base as the Jags celebrated the 1-0 win and their first state championship trip since 2014.<\/p>\n
There was just one thing: when the scoreboard cleared from Game 1, it read 5-4 in favor of the Northridge Jaguars.<\/p>\n
However, in an unprecedented playoff situation, Northridge pitcher Evan Malone exceeded the 120-pitch limit with two outs left in the seventh. Spain Park filed a protest, and eventually, NHS forfeited Game 1.<\/p>\n
The news came during Game 2, and the SPHS players pulled out a gritty performance in the nightcap to finish the job and punch their ticket to state.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate it for Malone,\u201d Spain Park coach Will Smith said after the series. \u201cI mean, he competed so well and you hate for somebody to lose on something like that, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The violation came in the bottom of the seventh with Northridge up 3-2, but two walks and a hit batter loaded up the bases to start the inning. The Alabama signee Malone then struck out Michael Johnson to get to one out.<\/p>\n
However, according to Spain Park\u2019s stats on GameChanger, Malone hit 120 pitches with the final pitch of the batter. By AHSAA rule, an upperclassman cannot throw more than 120 pitches in a day unless he is finishing a batter he started before he hit the limit.<\/p>\n
Malone stayed in for a game-tying sacrifice fly followed by a three-pitch groundout to end the inning. Afterwards, SPHS\u2019 GameChanger listed him at 124 pitches, while NHS\u2019 was one behind at 123.<\/p>\n
Northridge went up 5-3 in the top of the eighth with back-to-back run-scoring hits, and Malone would give way to what became three bullpen pitchers as they threw four-straight walks with two outs. NHS would eventually get the third out for the 5-4 win.<\/p>\n
During the sequence, Smith said he saw his first-base coach signal that Malone was at 121 pitches. That\u2019s when his brain immediately scrambled to what he should do.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, it was kind of like an out-of-body experience,\u201d Smith said. \u201cLike, I didn’t know exactly how to handle it. I didn’t know if I should go to the umpire about it, which we did. It’s not their job to stop play. I mean, they’re there to call balls and strikes and outs, but we had to report the violation once the game had ended.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith emphasized he hated to see a game get decided in such a way, especially one Malone pitched so well, but he also said that Northridge leaving Malone in helped tip the game in their favor with the bases loaded and one out in a one-run game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate it for them, but it was definitely a competitive advantage because he faced two guys over the max there once he got to the pitch count, and it was very weird because we didn’t want to burn multiple guys like after that, knowing that the thing had been violated, and you could have tell that it affected us in the top of the eighth there, but hate that it ended the way that it did.\u201d Smith said. \u201cI hate it for their group, too. I mean, I really do.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the middle of the report though, SPHS still had to prepare for Game 2 regardless of what the outcome of the protest would be. Smith said the circumstances were strange to navigate with his players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to Coosa Pines Federal Credit Union for sponsoring our coverage this season. By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[543,542,541,17,539,540],"class_list":{"0":"post-24338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-280-reporter","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-hoover","11":"tag-spain","12":"tag-spain-park","13":"tag-spain-park-high-school"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}