Cleveland fell to the Laurel-American All-Stars 10-6 in the championship game of the Dixie Youth 9-year-old State Baseball Tournament.
Laurel-American did a solid job at the plate by stroking 13 hits. Laurel hitters struckout just once. Cleveland committed eight errors and tagged five hits.
“Laurel was a tremendous hitting team,” Cleveland head coach Bill Dodd said by phone this morning. “Laurel had guys from top to bottom hitting the ball hard and putting it into play.”
Laurel American jumped on top of Cleveland early by scoring two runs in the top of the first to make the score 2-0. In the bottom half of the inning, Cleveland was able to load the bases with no outs, but couldn’t get any runs across and the score remained 2-0. Laurel-American tagged on four runs in the top of the second to make the score 6-0.
Cleveland fought back and cut Laurel’s lead to 6-5, but Laurel-American roared back in the fifth with five runs to put the game away. Cleveland was able to score another run but couldn’t get any closer.
Dodd said he is proud of the way the team has fought throughout the tournament.
“We’ve done a great job,” Dodd said. “The kids have done a great job. Even in the this last game, we got down but the kids came back down 6-0 and was able to score five runs to make it 6-5. At that time, we felt pretty confident we could pull the game out. I kept telling our guys its a long ball game, and we’re right in this thing.
“We came back out the next inning and shut them down,” Dodd continued. “We had two batters on in the fourth and couldn’t get the tying run in. In the fifth inning, Laurel was able to outmuscle us at the plate and got the lead up to 10-5. The kids did a great job of coming back, but we couldn’t come back enough.”
Cross Crowe, Cedric Gardner and Zach Willingham all pitched for Cleveland. Spence Martin stroked two hits to lead Cleveland, followed by Eli Stallings, Jacob Dodd and Cedric Gardner with a hit each.
The tournament for Cleveland started on Saturday. The team has been down in Hattiesburg the whole week.
Coach Dodd said the team has gotten great support from the community.
“I know Stephen Glorioso (Cleveland Park Commission Director) was at the ball game last night to support the Cleveland All-Stars,” Dodd said. “We had a good fan base. I appreciate all the parents and fans for supporting us through out the tournament here.”