After thrilling pitcher’s duel, AJ baseball now 1 win over Legion away from state title
The most important pitch in the most important game in the Andrew Jackson baseball team’s 2021 postseason run of destiny — and perhaps its most important game ever — was thrown in the top of the sixth with Legion Collegiate runners on first and second with two outs on Wednesday night in Kershaw.
Ashton Phillips, who’d just come in as a relief arm, was on the mound. The Volunteers were up, 1-0 — but Legion Collegiate, who’d been stunned into scorelessness up until then by Andrew Jackson’s left-handed ace and Wake Forest commit Kyle Percival, suddenly appeared to have life.
Phillips stared into his catcher’s mitt. Full count. So much of the town of Kershaw — who’d seen this team rumble through the Lower State only to play a Region 4-2A foe in Legion (who split with AJ in the regular season) in this year’s best-of-three 2A state championship series — held its collective breath.
Phillips then fired a fastball. And the crowd of 400-plus fans exhaled.
Well, they roared.
Strike three.
The Volunteers didn’t score a run in the bottom of the sixth and then prevented a Legion score in the top of the seventh — despite Colby Guy hitting a lead-off single and standing on third base with two outs and the game on the line — to take Game 1 of the state title series.
Final: 1-0, Andrew Jackson over Legion.
The Volunteers are now one win away from the program’s first-ever baseball state championship.
“Kyle likes the big games,” Andrew Jackson head baseball coach Mike Lucas told The Herald postgame, much of the crowd still lingering in the stands and savoring the big win. “(Ashton) is learning how to like the big games.”
Percival pitched 5.2 innings, allowing three hits and two walks and no runs. He also added nine strikeouts. (The junior lefty was subbed out in the top of the sixth before eclipsing the 90-pitch count; if he threw over 90 pitches, he wouldn’t be able to pitch on Monday, if the series goes to a third game, per South Carolina High School League rules.)
Percival was replaced by a capable reliever in Phillips, a College of Charleston commit, who allowed one hit but used four strikeouts to collect each of the four outs he needed in 1.1 innings of work.
“I told them that I’d give them everything I got if they gave me everything they got,” Percival told The Herald postgame. “And I knew if I kept on producing that they would back me up and score a run.”
The game’s pitching was remarkable on both sides: Legion’s left-handed sophomore Xavier Pelzer threw for all of Legion’s six innings and struck out seven. He only allowed two hits — but they arrived back-to-back in the form of a Landon Peavy double and an Ashton Phillips single, a combination that ultimately drove Peavy in and caused the game’s only run.
The sophomore lefty dealt, though. And Legion head coach Devon Lowery said as much postgame.
“Pitching, Xavier Pelzer was probably the best he’s been all year,” Lowery said. “The kid was just phenomenal. To be a sophomore in front of this crowd, to do what he did at their place… Losing 1-0 is a shame. He pitched his butt off.”
He added: “Defensively I thought we were pretty sound. I just thought offensively, we were just stymied a little and that the moment kind of got to us a little bit.”
Legion, the Rock Hill-based school, will have a chance to extend its season on Friday at the Chester Baseball Complex at 7 p.m.
“Winning Game 1 is nice, it shows that we can beat them,” Percival said before escaping into a sea of what he called “the best crowd in South Carolina” to celebrate with friends and family and other fans.
“And we only have to win one more.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2021 at 10:40 PM.
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