Butler rally eliminates Selma from district tournament
Published 6:48 pm Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Selma’s Ricky Austin bats against Butler on Tuesday. in a pre-major game at Bloch Park. Selma’s pre-major allstars won the first game against Butler, but fell short in game two. Butler won the district tournament after storming back from a six-run deficit against Selma in the second contest. –Roderick Mitchell
By Daniel Evans
The Selma Times-Journal
Tuesday night, the pre-major 15 and 16-year-old Selma allstars won their first game against Butler to force a winner-take-all second game.
Butler won game two 14-12 to end Selma’s season.
After part of two innings, it looked like Selma might pull away. Leading 6-2 in the top of the second, rain forced a two-hour rain delay.
Selma came out hot afterwards, adding more runs and extending its lead to 11-5 in the sixth inning. Butler rallied, scoring six runs to tie the game, and adding another three runs in the top of the seventh inning to take the lead for good.
“We were winning 6-2 in the top of the second. The rain came and we had about a two-hour rain delay. When we got back out there, we played great. We had them 11-5, top of the sixth,” Lebo Jones, Selma Recreation Department baseball and softball director, said. “They scored six runs to tie the game and then in the top of the seventh they went up 14-11. We scored one run in the bottom of the seventh to make it 14-12 and that was it.”
In the end, errors caught up to Selma.
“We should have won. We made too many errors,” Jones said. “That’s what we did the whole tournament and it finally caught up to us.”
The Selma 17 and 18-year-old major allstars will be hosting the state tournament starting on July 11. It will run through July 15 or 16.
