Wonders hold SPC rival Spiders hitless

By Bill Kiser
Kannapolis Citizen
A.L. Brown head coach Empsy Thompson isn’t ready to say that Mother Nature isn’t a baseball fan.
But the recent spate of wet weather hasn’t done the Wonders much good, as a lack of quality practice time has hampered Thompson’s young team entering the final month of the South Piedmont Conference season.
“We just haven’t had a whole lot of practice time,” Thompson said. “It seems like any day we’re not playing, it’s raining. There’s only so much you can do in a gym as far as baseball’s concerned.
“It’s kinda tough to get things done when we’ve had as much rain as we’ve had.”
Despite the wet conditions, Brown had a busy week, losing two out of three games played last week.
The Wonders, which were 6-8 overall and 4-5 in the SPC entering Tuesday’s game at Anson County, opened with a 5-2 victory over cross-town league rival Concord on April 1 but dropped their next two by big margins — 10-3 to South Rowan in a non-conference game April 2 and 16-5 to Sun Valley at home on April 4.
Brown plays twice this week, taking on SPC foe Marvin Ridge at Kannapolis Veterans Field on Friday. Game time is 7 p.m.
Against the Spiders, Brown pitchers Jacob Wright and Dylan May combined for a no-hitter, striking out 12.
Despite that, Concord led early, taking advantage of five batters hit by pitches and the Wonders’ inability to take advantage of scoring opportunities, leaving the bases loaded twice.
It took a three-run, walk-off home run by Wright in the bottom of the seventh inning to break a 2-2 tie and give Brown the league win.
“It was pretty dramatic,” Thompson said. “They had an opportunity to win the game without getting a hit, which is pretty hard to do.”
It was less so in the Wonders’ next two games.
Against the Raiders, in which Thompson rested most of his starters, Brown’s pitchers put 11 runners on base by a combination of walks or hit batters, while its offense was held to just five hits.
Two days later against the Spartans, the Wonders’ defense committed seven errors and gave up nine runs in the fifth inning. Wright was Brown’s lone bright spot, slamming a pair of home runs.
“We did not play well, and they did a great job,” Thompson said of Sun Valley. “They played as good as a team as anyone we’ve played this year. They made the routine plays and didn’t strike out. I was very impressed with them.”