Skyline hands Brentsville first district loss in baseball

By HUGH RIST For the News & Messenger
Published: April 18, 2008

Sometimes fortunes can be cruel in the game of baseball and Friday night the Brentsville Tigers experienced the most excruciating of fortunes en route to their first Northwestern District loss of the season, a 4-3 verdict to the visiting Skyline Hawks.

With one out in the bottom of the seventh and the Tigers down by a run, Jimmy Kerns golfed a single to center and advanced to second when Chase Garrison beat out an excellent sacrifice bunt. But Kerns, seeing that third base was unoccupied, aggressively tried to move to third and was thrown out on a close play after a perfect throw from first baseman Timmy Senter to third baseman Tyler Settle.

Instead of having runners at the corners with one out, Brentsville ended up with a runner at first and two outs before hard-luck losing pitcher Scott Betterly struck out to end it. In the end, the aggressiveness that had punctuated the Tigers' strong start to the season resulted in their drawing a heartbreaking defeat.

"I think he saw third base was open and went for it," Tigers coach Brian Knight said. "Their first baseman made a great play to get the ball to third quickly. When you play a close game, the little things are magnified. We just needed to do a better job of executing. Monday night we face a big test against Sherando to see how we respond and if we match their intensity."

Betterly pitched a masterful game for six innings for Brentsville (10-2 overall, 6-1 in district play). The senior, who has played every varsity game the past four years for the Tigers, yielded just four hits and fanned seven in six innings. However, he had one bad inning—a four-run third inning rally for Skyline (5-5, 3-3), and it proved extremely costly.

In that inning, Betterly surrendered consecutive singles to Luke Pingley and Matt Kerns before throwing a costly wild pitch while striking out Nate Jackson. Keaton Neab hit a sacrifice fly to center to make the score 2-1. Betterly had a chance to get out of the inning when he induced Tyler Atkins to hit a grounder to shortstop, but the ball was booted by Rich Lindsay as the tying run scored.

Moments later, Senter blasted a homer over the left-field fence to give Skyline a 4-1 lead.

Brentsville scored its first run without the benefit of a hit as the Tigers took advantage of two errors. In the fourth, the Tigers moved within 4-2 when Brian McBride pounded a run-scoring single to center, that brought home Justin Frazier.

Chase Garrison led off the fifth inning with a bad-hop single, took second on a wild pitch, and scored on a two-base error by right fielder Rodney Custer after a fly ball by Betterly.

"Brentsville is a very good baseball team," Skyline coach Todd Miller said. "We were fortunate the bang-bang play at third (in the seventh inning) went our way. We knew we were going to be in for a tough game and fortunately our starter Jon King mixed his pitches well to throw a complete game. We were fortunate to come out of here with a victory."