Facing a 1-0 deficit in the fifth inning, Durant’s Zach Barfield stepped up to the plate with no outs and Steven Witchoskey on base. The very first thing he did was screw up a bunt attempt.
He’ll look back on it as the best mistake he ever made in high school baseball.
Why? Because Barfield dug back in, went with the change of plans and hit the RBI triple that, when the inning was over, was the linchpin of the Cougars’ 3-1 win over tournament host Brandon.
“I went up there, and Coach (Butch Valdes) gave me the ‘bunt’ sign first,” Barfield said after the win. “I missed – I didn’t get the bunt down – so he gave me the hit-and-run, and that was the one I hit the triple off of. I was just trying to hit it off the ground, the other way.”
That’s a happy accident, if there ever was one.
The Cougars battled the Eagles and their raucous home crowd, with sophomore Jonah Scolaro on the mound for the blue and gold, and the scoreless tie was broken up in the fourth inning when Brandon’s Teddy Flynn was able to score after a leadoff walk. Scolaro appeared rattled, but didn’t let that shaky inning stick in his mind for long.
“That one inning, I was a little shaken up,” Scolaro said. “But I had (Justin) Nardello coming up to me, and he said, ‘You got this. We’re gonna keep hitting.’ It made me feel a lot better.”
Nardello spoke the truth, as Durant was able to mount three runs in the fifth inning when, following Barfield’s triple, Jonathan Hermann scored him with an RBI single, and Scolaro put the icing on the cake by driving Hermann home.