By Johnny Sanders, Sports Editor
PELL CITY – The Moody Blue Devils traveled to Pell City on Tuesday night to take on the Panthers on their senior night. While Moody would put up a good fight and look like they were going to come back in the seventh inning, a Pell City grand slam in the fifth and “little things,” as Moody Head Coach Eamonn Kelly would say, proved to be too much to overcome for the Blue Devils.
The game would start with each team getting a run across the plate in the first inning. Moody’s Payton Isbell, after hitting a single on his first at-bat, would advance to third and then score first when Landon Cherry hit a sacrifice to Pell City pitcher Ethan Lang.
Lang and company would shut the Blue Devils out in the second while putting another run on the board for Pell City to make it 2-0 heading into the third, where both teams would once again score a single run each. Moody would score on a single to center field by Cherry, driving in Isbell once again to tie the game. Pell City would answer in the bottom of the inning to make it 3-2 after 3 innings of play.
Neither team would score in the fourth but there would be fireworks in the fifth. Moody would tie the game in the top of the inning when Isbell would once again find home, this time on a passed ball. In the bottom of the inning, Pell City would score 5 runs, 4 of which came on a grand slam.
Pell City would add a run in the sixth to make it 9-3. In the top of the seventh, Moody would have a chance to do what they have done numerous times this season by scoring runs late to get the win, but this time they would come up short. Carson Mitchell would get on first with a single to center field, followed by a single by Isbell to put 2 runners on for Chase Marshall. Marshall would double to center field, scoring Mitchell and Isbell. Cherry would then hit a single to put runners on the corners. All of this came before the first out of the inning. At the end, Johnny Earl would ground out to third and Cherry would get caught trying to steal second base to seal the win for Pell City.
Panther’s pitcher Ethan Lang, who got his first start of the year in his final game with the Panthers, pitched 4 innings, allowing just 2 runs on 6 hits and striking out 3 batters.
Moody threw 4 different pitchers with Brady Dodd getting the start and getting just over one inning of play, followed by Payton Isbell, Colby Graves and Chase Marshall. At the plate, Payton Isbell was the bright spot, not only getting on base, but scoring all 4 times he stepped to the plate.
“We have to keep teaching the situations to these young guys. We’ve got to work on our IQ. We are down by 4 runs. Not trying to take the base there. If anything, we are trying to score a run there. That’s not what we want,” said Coach Kelly. “We dug ourselves a hole with the grand slam. We should have caught the ball foul before the grand slam and then we walked a guy. Little stuff. We have to do the little stuff right or we aren’t going to be successful. That’s just the basics of it.”
Moody ended the regular season 16-14 and will head to Arab on Thursday night to begin the playoffs. Coach Kelly continued, “We are tough. We battle to the end and never give up. Our mindset is that we can beat anybody, no matter how many runs we are down. We’ve just got to do the little things right and not make mistakes. When you make mistakes, you get beat.”