Chatham baseball holds off Gretna in a slugfest

CHATHAM — In terms of next week’s Region B tournament, Friday’s Dogwood District championship game had no meaning for Chatham and Gretna. Win or lose, the teams already had their opponents locked up before a pitch was thrown. Yet, that hardly seemed like the case once the teams took the field.

Chatham held off a furious Gretna rally for a 16-12 victory, giving the Cavaliers a sweep of the Dog-wood’s regular-season and tournament championships.

“When the crowd starting cheering and the fans got into it, I started to see a little emotion out of our guys,” Chatham coach Chad Anderson said. “It didn’t mean anything, but it did. Any time you play, you want to win. And it is for a trophy, too, so that means something.”

After exploding for four runs in the first inning, Chatham doubled its lead the next inning on Matt Bray’s third grand slam of the season.

“They hit the baseball,” Gretna coach Calvin Takata said. “What can you do? I thought we made some good pitches, but they just hit it. Not a whole lot you can do.”

Chatham (19-2) increased its lead to 10-1 after three innings, but Gretna (13-6) broke through in the top of the fourth. The Hawks pieced together four hits and took advantage of two walks and a hit by pitch en route to a six-run inning.

Although Chatham got one of those runs back in the bottom of the fourth, Gretna picked up right where it left off in its next at-bat. The Cavaliers’ inability to find the strike zone led to four walks, including one with the bases loaded. When the dust had settled, Chatham’s ample lead had dwindled to 11-10.

“We didn’t throw strikes,” Anderson said. “No lead is safe when you do that. I knew that we had to score more runs.”

Chatham did that in a hurry. Gavin Hylton blasted a three-run homer — his 11th of the season — in the bottom of the fifth inning. Bray followed two batters later with a two-run shot over the fence in right-center for his seventh homer of the season.

“It was a little scare, but we knew our offense could supply us with more runs than what we already had on the board,” said Bray, who finished 2-for-2 with six RBIs and a pair of walks. “We kept our cool and didn’t get too worried.”

Gretna added two more runs in the sixth, but Chatham’s Drew Kirks came in to pitch the final inning and slammed the door on the Hawks with three strikeouts in four batters faced.

“I thought we had some opportunities, we just didn’t capitalize and they did,” said Takata, whose team left 10 runners stranded.

Chatham hosts Randolph-Henry in the Region B quarterfinals on Monday at 6 p.m. Gretna will travel to Goochland for a 6 p.m. start against the James River District’s top seed.

Even though Friday’s game had no bearing on those matchups, Bray said hoisting the trophy was a must for the Cavaliers, who went undefeated against district opponents.

“To me, it meant a lot because I feel like that tonight if we would have lost, it would have been a burden to the team because we hadn’t faced (a loss to a district opponent) all year long,” he said.