May 5--The Vidalia Indians baseball team beat Berrien County twice on Tuesday night to move on to the third round in the AA state playoffs. They will play the winner of the Elbert County and Lovett series.The site for Vidalia’s next series will be determined by the winner of that series.If Elbert County wins the Indians will play on the road and if Lovett wins the teams will play in Vidalia.
The Indians took game one by a score of 10-0 in 6 innings by the run rule. Landry Mead was the winning pitcher allowing only two hits, one walk and one hit batter while striking out 9 batters. It was another dominating pitching performance by Mead.
On offense the Indians scored runs in each of the 6 innings with the final two coming from Hughes Graham’s second homerun of the game in the bottom of the sixth. Graham led the offense with 2 homeruns, 3 runs and 4 rbi’s. Cason Banks had two doubles and a single, 3 runs and 2 rbi’s while Mead had 2 hits and 2 rbi’s. The Indians scored 2 runs in the first, third, fifth and sixth innings along with single runs in the second and fourth.
In the second game the Indians were considered the visiting team and jumped all over the Rebels pitcher in the first inning with 9 runs. Mead grounded out to start the game but then Whited doubled, followed by Dalley’s double and then singles from Graham and Moncus. Michael Blount laid down a sacrifice bunt driving in a run and moving Moncus to second which was followed by a walk to Walden, a single by Spivey and walk to Banks. Mead came up for the second time in the inning and was hit by a pitch. Whited followed with his second hit of the inning, Dalley walked, Graham got his second hit of the inning and Moncus walked before the third out was made. When the smoke cleared the Rebels would come to bat in the bottom half of the first down 9-0.
That was more than enough runs for Caden Spivey who shut down the Rebel offense only allowing 2 hits, 2 walks, one hit batter and striking out 4 batters in the 5 inning game. The Indians did score two more runs in the top of the 5th inning making the score 11-0 Vidalia. When Spivey shut down the Rebels in the bottom half of the fifth that meant another run rule win for Vidalia.
The Indian offense was led by Whited, Dalley, Graham and Moncus with two hits each. Hughes Graham picked up three more rbi’s in the second game giving him seven for the two game series and thirteen for the first four playoff games.(Pictures by Carroll Williams)
