Airport stays alive in 3A baseball playoffs

Airport’s Zach Feaster had very little pressure when he came to the plate with the bases loaded and no outs in the seventh inning of a tie game with Berkeley in the Class 3A lower state elimination contest. He knew the Eagles’ season was hanging in the balance, but the senior-laden team has been in this situation many times.

Feaster punched a hanging curve ball into centerfield to score Reece Stewart to give Airport a 9-8 victory against the Stags on Wednesday night.

“With the infield in and no outs, I was just looking to drive something to the outfield,” the senior catcher said. “I was sitting dead-red fastball, but I saw the hanger and laid it into the outfield. We have 10 seniors, and we’ve been here before. We knew this could be our last game. We wanted to leave everything out on the field.”

Airport (20-10) will travel to Hilton Head on Friday in another elimination game. The winner of that will face St. James for the lower state title on Monday. Whoever wins out of Airport and Hilton Head would have to win twice on Monday to advance to the state championship series, while the Sharks need just one win.

“At this point, you just want to find ways to survive,” Airport coach Tim Perry said. “Our guys are resilient. They’ve been that way all year, and they never give up. We’re a senior-laden club, so we’ve been able to handle adversity. We don’t get too up or too down. That keeps us in every game.”

Neither team played its best. Airport committed six errors, while Berkeley (22-7) made several mental mistakes, couldn’t execute bunts in crucial situations and stranded 11 runners, including eight in scoring position. The Stags left the bases loaded in the top half of the seventh.

“That’s not our style,” Berkeley coach Landy Cox said. “Our style is pitching and defense. When Berkeley scores eight runs, we usually win. We never kick it around and make poor decisions like we did tonight. We left some guys on base and didn’t execute, but it was the lack of making plays when we had a chance.”

Airport trailed 5-2 after two innings but used the solid relief pitching of Justin Allen and Josh Talton to stay around long enough to stage the comeback victory. The Eagles used a five-run fourth inning to get back into it.

Josh Tucker had an RBI single, Kyle Watts added a two-run single and Evan Richardson closed the four-hit outburst with another RBI single. The Eagles added another run on a Stags error and they claimed a 7-5 lead.

Berkeley tied it with two unearned runs in the fifth. CJ Mack and Ryan Legette had RBIs in the inning, but Allen should have gotten out of it. Airport committed two errors in the frame.

“Without a doubt, we got a lift from our bullpen,” Perry said. “Justin had some bad luck when we didn’t make some plays behind him.”

Each team scored a run in the sixth and left the bases loaded before Berkeley left the bases loaded again in the seventh without scoring.

Talton made big pitches to get out of those jams.

“Josh was our best guy coming off of last season,” Perry said. “He had tendinitis in the fall, so we shut him down a couple of different times. We had to nurse him through the season. Tonight, he came out and threw like a seasoned veteran when we needed it.”

Airport finished with 14 hits and all nine starters had at least one hit.

“We know we have to keep scoring runs,” Perry said. “It’s going to take a full staff on Friday. We want to try to get through it and get to the weekend to get some guys rested up.”

This story was originally published May 11, 2016 at 10:57 PM with the headline "Airport stays alive in 3A baseball playoffs."