KODAK, Tenn. – In the end, all you could really do was grasp your temples in disbelief, mouth agape, as the trajectory of a conference tournament, and perhaps two teams' entire seasons, made an about-face in the span of a few brief moments.
At about 11:00 p.m., Wingate (33-18) was one strike away from clinching a trip to the 2019 Pilot/Flying J South Atlantic Conference Baseball Championship finals.
Less than 10 minutes later, Newberry (41-13) was dogpiling in shallow right center after scoring four runs, three of them unearned, to stun the Bulldogs and move two wins away from capturing the program's first conference tournament title in 20 years.
The Wolves walked off Wingate by a final count of 6-5, stringing together three hits around a walk and a costly error, with
Tyler White providing the knockout punch.
"I don't know what just happened," said White on the field after the game, "but it was awesome."
White's walk-off winner wouldn't have been possible without his teammates' prior heroics. With Newberry trailing 5-2,
Peyton Spangler resuscitated the offense by working a full-count walk after two quick outs to begin the ninth. Three pitches later,
Dalton Lansdowne singled into right field that advanced Spangler to third.
Facing an 0-1 count,
Danton Hyman ripped a double through the legs of Wingate's first baseman that scored Spangler and put Lansdowne 90 feet away. The hit was Hyman's 89th of the season, establishing a new Newberry single-season record and ensuring he reached base for the 60th time in the last 61 games.
Zane Tarrance was up next and rolled a 2-1 pitch to the third baseman that appeared it would end the game. But the throw was wide of the bag and skipped into the warning track down the right field line, allowing both Hyman and Lansdowne to score to tie the game and moving Tarrance all the way to third.
White strode to the plate next and quickly found himself in an 0-2 hole, but sat on a slider from Second Team All-SAC reliever Hunter Dula and deposited it in left center field for the game-winner.
Newberry's improbable win may have ended Wingate's season, with the Bulldogs on the wrong side of the bubble in the first official NCAA regional rankings and likely needing an automatic bid to secure a postseason berth. It also likely kept the regular season champion Wolves in the running to host regional games at the Smith Road Complex, where Newberry has compiled a 23-2 record in 2019.
Quinton Driggers earned the win in relief, moving to 9-0 on the season to tie
Josh Bookbinder (2019), Wesley Camp (2015), and Scott Butcher (1993) for the single-season school record. He gave up an earned run against a conference opponent for the first time this season but allowed two hits and struck out four in 2.1 innings on the mound hours after an inning in relief in the Wolves' first game of the day.
The Wolves had jumped out to an early 2-0 lead with a pair of runs in the first inning, with
Tyler Ackard's two-out single sparking a rally that culminated in
Tony Matos's two-run single to right field. But the Bulldogs answered with a two-out rally of their own in the second to tie the score.
Wingate scored a pair of runs on three hits and two errors in the top of the sixth inning to take the lead and added a run in the eighth on a hit batsman and a double to set up the final sequence at the plate for Newberry.
The Wolves were charged with three errors but turned three double plays in the contest, notably on a ninth inning line drive to shortstop
Colin Allman with the bases loaded and nobody out, to keep Wingate from extending its lead.
Newberry now turns its attention to Catawba, which it must beat twice tomorrow to win the championship. One loss will give the tournament title to Catawba. The Wolves swept the teams' three-game series two weekends ago but were shut out for the first time in 101 games in a 2-0 Catawba win earlier on Sunday.
First pitch is set for 1:00 p.m., with the if-necessary game scheduled for approximately 4:00 p.m.
