Published: May 13, 2008 01:02 pm            

Watch out for these Panthers next year

Latta’s Eddie Collins almost seemed to be fighting back tears as his team gathered up its equipment following Friday’s crushing 4-3 loss to old rival Dale in the first round of the Class 2A state baseball tournament at Dolese Park.

Collins has seen his share of losses in 27 fall and spring seasons as Latta’s baseball coach, but this one hurt. A lot.

“It’s right up there,” Collins said matter-of-factly when asked how Friday’s defeat ranked on his list of all-time state tournament disappointments.

The Panthers — ranked No. 7 in 2A but ready for war after a spring schedule that sent them up against some of the best teams in the state in all classes — were just six outs away from an upset of the third-ranked Pirates. In the space of a few painful seconds, though, Latta went from being six outs away from victory to being six outs from another disappointing one-run state tournament setback.

Sophomore ace Tyler Reeves was outstanding in his state tournament debut, allowing just three hits and pitching out of a couple of jams while holding the hard-hitting Dale lineup to two runs through five innings. He got ahead of Pirate five-hole hitter Trace Dilliner — who had doubled leading off the second and scored his team’s first run on a passed ball — 1-2, then sawed Dilliner off with an inside pitch he fisted into left field for a soft single.

After Chris Wolfe’s sacrifice bunt moved Dilliner into scoring position, Reeves again got ahead 1-2 — this time to seven-hole hitter Tyler Holton — before giving up another single to left. Three pitches later, he hit Turner Coon — whose unlikely home run off the top of the center field fence has staked Dale ace Trevor Nelson to a 2-0 lead in the fourth — with a 1-1 fastball.

Suddenly, the bases were loaded and Reeves’ day on the mound was done — but not his role in the day’s drama.

Enter senior Dalton Brown, who had absorbed tough-luck 2-1 and 3-2 losses as Latta’s opening-round starter in state tournaments in the spring and fall of 2007. Brown’s first pitch seemed to result in exactly what the situation called for — a tapper back to the mound by Dalton Streber that should have been an inning-ending 1-2-3 double play.

But after taking Brown’s throw to the plate to retire Dilliner, Latta back-up catcher Boomer Factor tried to lob his throw to first base over Streber instead of stepping out toward the mound for a better angle. The soft throw sailed into right field as Holton raced home with the tying run, and Reeves — who had moved to right as Collins made wholesale defensive changes with the pitching change — backed up the play but basically threw the ball to NOBODY.

Reeves’ throw went squarely between third base and home, leaving Factor to watch helplessly as the ball went into the Dale dugout, allowing Coon to also score and put the Pirates back in front.

And Nelson — after struggling through the previous two innings — did the rest. The senior righthander surrendered a leadoff single to sophomore Wacey Henderson (his second hit of the game) leading off the sixth but coaxed a fielder’s choice grounder to shortstop from freshman cleanup hitter Dylan Tinkler and retired Reeves on a liner to short and Factor on a ground ball to third to end the sixth. He then retired the bottom of the Latta lineup in order to send the Pirates — the defending two-time 2A champs — to a semifinal showdown with No. 2 Oktaha Saturday in Shawnee.

Latta, meanwhile, went home with another devastating one-run loss in game the Panthers clearly had a chance to win but a game they literally threw away.

Although the two errors in the sixth were the icing on the playoff cake for Dale, Latta had laid the groundwork for the Pirate rally earlier in the game. Dilliner’s double in the second was a routine fly ball that was misplayed into two bases, and Reeves hit Holton and Coon (both in the space of three pitches) later in the inning to load the bases. Although the pitch that scored Dilliner with the game’s first run was ruled a passed ball, it was a curve ball that broke outside and ticked off Factor’s glove, and it became even more critical when Reeves came back to strike out Streber and Flewallen to end the inning.

Coon’s homer in the fourth was even more of a surprise. Never known for his power, Coon — whose older brother, Jared, was an All-Stater for Dale in 2006 — drove a first-pitch fastball on a line to center, where it hit the top of the fence and trickled over. If the ball had come back onto the field of play, Coon probably would have been stranded at second or third, because Reeves struck out Streber and picked Flewallen off first base to end the inning after walking him on four pitches.

If not for Dale’s ugly rally in the sixth, junior second baseman Thad Gillum would probably have joined Reeves as the heroes of the day for Latta.

A slick-fielding infielder and part-time pitcher who batted in only a handful of games during the season, Gillum was in the nine-hole in the lineup Friday because Collins benched sophomore catcher Ryan Stoup.

Hitting for himself for one of the few times all season, Gillum struck out looking at a Nelson fastball in the third. But with Mike Hood (running for Factor, who led off the inning with a single) at third and Robert Simpson (who was hit by a pitch) at second after a two-strike sacrifice bunt by Zac Fidler in the fifth, Gillum got the biggest hit of his varsity career, lining a first-pitch fastball into right-center to score both runners and put Latta on top 3-2.

In addition to his heroics at the plate, Gillum made a couple of sparkling defensive plays on ground balls up the middle by Wolfe — the first to turn an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded in the third and the second with a runner at third to end the seventh — to save the Panthers at least three runs.

As disappointing as Friday’s loss was for the Latta seniors (Brown, Factor, Fidler and Robert Simpson), the game provided a fitting farewell for Brown, who started at shortstop as a freshman on the Panthers’ last state championship squad in 2005 and had established himself as one of the area’s toughest and most versatile competitors in the three years since. In addition to his two strong innings on the mound, Brown also homered in the fourth inning to cut Dale’s early 2-0 lead in half, and he made a nice play on a ground ball to short for the first out in the fifth (the only 1-2-3 inning of the day for the Latta pitching staff).

And, although Reeves — a combined 13-3 in the spring as a freshman and sophomore — absorbed his first loss to finish the season 6-1, he proved the confidence Collins showed in him by giving him the start was justified. He was cool under pressure and, despite hitting four batters and walking two others, he surrendered just five hits in five-plus innings against one of the state’s best hitting teams.

Although Brown won’t be back next fall, Reeves will be — as the ace of a still young staff that will include Hood (who was Latta’s No. 3 starter last fall but missed the spring with a shoulder injury), Henderson and sophomore-to-be Reed Johnson, who both pitched well late in the spring.

That trio, along with Tinkler, Gillum and sophomore leadoff hitter Seyth Roebuck, should form the nucleus of another Latta state tournament team — a team with a bitter loss to remember all summer and to use as a little added incentive heading into what should be an outstanding year for Collins’ program.

        

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