BREMEN, Ala. – The 7-5 Cold Springs Eagles hosted area rival Falkville on Tuesday afternoon in the first of three games the teams will play against each other this week.
Both starters pitched six innings or more, with Falkville’s Landon Jones striking out three, allowing three earned runs and striking out three in his complete game effort. On the other side, Cold Springs’ Cooper Johnson pitched a gem, only giving up three hits, zero earned runs and fanning seven Blue Devil batters.
While neither Falkville run was credited to Johnson, the first came in the top of the second. The Blue Devils’ third baseman, Briley Tomlin, got on base to lead off the second inning, sneaking a ground ball under the glove of Cold Springs first baseman Dru Prevatt. After stealing second during the next at bat, Tomlin would get knocked home with a shot to the gap in right-center field from Clay Fitzgerald to give the Blue Devils a 1-0 lead. Johnson would get out of the defensive jam with a pair of strikeouts.
Much of the game was a pitching duel between Johnson and Jones, and a great one at that. Jones and the Devils kept hold of their lead in the second, with Jones striking out Prevatt on a beautiful off-speed pitch to end the inning. After Falkville failed to generate any offense in the top of the third, Cold Springs held their first rally in the bottom half of the inning.
Elijah Cole got things started with a ground-ball single that got past Falkville’s infield, then an Ayden Black pop-fly got lost in the sunlight dropped between three players for a second straight single. After a pop fly was caught on the next at bat, Eagle third baseman Boston Archer was hit by a pitch, giving Cold Springs loaded bases with only one out. After his hot start on the mound, Johnson stepped to the plate and knocked in a run for Cold Springs on a fielder’s choice ground ball to tie the game up at one.
In the next half-inning, the Devils would retaliate. With two outs and Logan Fowler on second, Jones’ third strike was dropped and after gathering the ball, Cold Springs’ catcher launched the ball over Prevatt’s head at first, allowing Fowler to score from second and Jones to make it on safely. The Eagles would get out of the top half of the fourth with a Jones eventually getting caught stealing third, but Falkville had retaken the lead, 2-1.
Then, the pitchers took over again. In the bottom of the fourth, Jones saw only three batters, striking out two. After the Devils were caught stealing again to end an inning, Jones threw just four pitches across three batters to get out of the fifth inning unscathed.
It wasn’t until the bottom of the sixth that Cold Springs got the bats going again. Brooks Black dropped in a blooper to shallow center field to get on, then the next batter, Brandon Chasteen, sent him all the way to third with a double down the line. After a meeting at the mound, Colt Perdue was beamed by a fastball, and the bases were loaded with Eagles once again. Up to bat was Prevatt, who knocked a sac-fly to left field, scoring Black and tying the game up at two with just one frame to go.
Johnson stayed in the game to start the seventh, and got the first two Falkville batters he saw out, but allowed contact on both. Eagles’ head coach Brendan Voce made the call to bring in Ayden Black to close the game out. He did just that, striking out Jones to give Cold Springs a chance to walk it off.
For the third time on the evening, Cold Springs loaded the bases. Cole and Ayden Black got back-to-back hits, and Falkville intentionally walked Lindan Hill to bring up Archer. With zero outs and the game on the line, Archer hit a laser to left field that fell just short of being a walk-off grand slam. One run was all the Eagles needed, however, and Archer’s RBI single got Cold Springs the 3-2 victory.
The Eagles, now 8-5, were led at the plate by Cole, Chasteen (2B) and Black (2B) who all recorded two hits for the game.
Cold Springs will travel to Falkville for a double-header on Thursday night, then turn around and play in the Cullman County Tournament beginning Friday.
