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Wild Night in the Tobacco State League: Upsets, Extra Innings & Epic Drama

Quarterfinal Recap | By Chase Murphy

RED SPRINGS — If Game 5s are the essence of playoff baseball, the Tobacco State League just delivered a masterpiece. Three elimination games went down to the wire Wednesday night — including a walk-off sac fly, a ninth-inning road upset, and an 18-inning war of attrition.

Here’s what happened:

No. 1 Red Springs 3, No. 9 Smithfield-Selma 2
Already recapped in detail above, Red Springs needed every ounce of grit to survive. Danny Abell’s sacrifice fly in the bottom of the ninth won it. MVP Justin Stubbs stole three bases and reached base four times.

No. 10 Angier-Fuquay Springs 1, No. 2 Whiteville 0
Top of the 9th. A scoreless classic. That’s when Angier-FS scratched across a run on a one-out RBI double from Billy Moore — the only one of the game — to stun the heavily favored Whiteville squad. Josh Poole (7.0 IP) and Chris Parlato (2.0 IP, W) pitched a combined four-hit shutout, launching the last team in the league into the semis.

“We weren’t supposed to win,” said Angier manager J.D. Parker. “But our boys didn’t care about that.”

No. 3 Warsaw 2, No. 6 Lumberton 1 (18 Innings)
Let that sink in: Eighteen innings. Scoreless through 11, both teams traded single runs in the 12th. Then nothing — until the bottom of the 18th, and Alex Hagemann hit a sac fly to right to score Jon Lamon.

The sac fly - the most mundane, most beautiful play in baseball when the game's on the line.

Semifinal Matchups
(4) Sanford vs. (1) Red Springs
(10) Angier-FS vs. (3) Warsaw

Both are best-of-five series. Both series start Friday, Aug. 8. Expect nothing short of chaos — because in the debut season of the TSL, anything can happen.