Road not taken leads to Tumwater baseball win over Wolves

Clay Hill changed his mind, giving Jackson Davis the chance to do exactly what he set out to do.

The result was a walk-off single by Davis that gave the Tumwater High School baseball team a 6-5 win over Black Hills on Wednesday afternoon, lifting the host T-Birds into a tie for second place in the 2A Evergreen Conference.

The teams play again Thursday at Black Hills.

Though he had driven in a run with a third-inning ground ball, Davis was 0 for 3 heading into the bottom of the seventh.

“I contemplated pinch hitting for him,” Tumwater coach Hill said.

But after Noah Sirkel, who had doubled with one out, moved to third base on a ground ball to the right side by Sam Jones, Hill asked his left fielder what he thought. “Noah said: ‘Jackson Davis has got this,’ so I left him in.”

Davis went to the plate looking for a fastball he could drive the other way. Mission accomplished: The Tumwater catcher lined the first pitch he saw down the right field line and Sirkel jogged home with the winning run.

“I was confident throughout the game that I would pick my teammates up,” Davis said. “I told Joseph Brascher (who threw more than 100 pitches, working into the seventh inning but getting no decision) we’d pick him up and we did.”

As Davis headed down the first base line, he celebrated with a wag of his right index finger reminiscent of a gesture Oakland catcher Stephen Vogt made after driving in the only run in an A’s walk-off win over Detroit during the 2013 playoffs.

It was a tribute, not a coincidence. Vogt, whose wife Alyssa is the T-Birds’ girls basketball coach, has become a role model for Tumwater catchers, first Ian Surgue and now Davis.

“He’s been a great leader and mentor to me,” Davis said.

Brascher did his best work in the middle innings to keep the T-Birds (6-3, 2-1 2A EvCo) in the game after they fell behind 3-0 before coming to bat when a Milo Ames double for Black Hills (4-7, 1-2) in the top of the first drove home two unearned runs.

Tumwater got two runs back in the bottom of the first when Sirkel drove them in with the first of his two doubles.

But a double by Black Hills leadoff batter Nate Hutson — who would go 4 for 4 with two steals and two runs scored — made it 4-2 in the second inning.

That’s when Brascher, relying on a big-breaking curveball as his offspeed pitch, settled in, pitching four shutout innings — while Tumwater built a 5-4 lead — before turning the ball over to Nathan Walter after giving up a game-tying single to Cole Lester in the seventh.

Walter struck out the only two batters he faced to get the win.

“Joseph threw a lot of pitches,” said Hill. “I wanted him to have a chance to get the win —he was battling so hard.”

This story was originally published April 13, 2016 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Road not taken leads to Tumwater baseball win over Wolves."