Auburn Orange AAAs fall to Florida

By Tom Peavy

Published: August 4, 2008

LaGRANGE, Ga. — It wasn’t the way Auburn Orange hoped to open play in the 2008 Dixie Youth AAA (9-10) World Series.

After dominating the first 2 ½ innings Monday against West Seminole, Fla., Auburn suddenly couldn’t find a way to slow down the hot hitters from Florida.

While Auburn’s offense was able to keep things even, the game came down to the bottom of the sixth.

And in the sixth, a leadoff double from Vincenzo Catanza set up Dean Drafts, who connected with a bloop single to score Catanza with the game-winning, walk-off run and an 11-10 victory.

Auburn drops into the losers’ bracket of the Series and will face off with Diboll, Texas today at 4:30 p.m. in an elimination game. Texas fell in its opener, 12-0, to Louisiana.

“We’ve got to fight our way through the losers’ bracket now,” Auburn manager Van Northcutt said. “We went to the losers’ bracket at states on the second day and battled back.

“We’ve got to put this one behind us and see if we can bounce back and keep working a day at a time.”

Auburn seemed very much in control early, scoring three runs in the first and one more in the second to take a 4-0 lead.

Bradley Northcutt was also solid on the mound, allowing just one hit and striking out four. But Northcutt was pulled after the second to preserve his available innings, and Florida made sure it took advantage.

Despite not getting a single ball out of the infield, Florida found a way to scratch together five runs to take the lead.

After a leadoff walk, Will Maggio reached on an infield hit and Gerard Hamas reached on a bunt single to load the bases. Florida’s first four runs scored on wild pitches and the go-ahead run came across on a fielder’s choice.

“Up in Clanton at the state tournament in the game we lost, we had one bad inning where we had 10 walks and four errors,” Van Northcutt said. “Maybe this was the bad inning and we can bounce back and keep on going.”

Auburn, though, answered right back with five runs of its own in the fourth to take a 9-5 lead.

After tying things up on a Florida error, two more came home on a Rob Smith hit and two-base error. Another Auburn run came home on a
fielder’s choice and Austin Triplett picked up an RBI with a bloop single.

Florida bounced right back to plate four runs in the fourth to tie things at 9.

Auburn made it 10-9 with a run in the fifth only to see Florida knot it back at 10 in the bottom half of the frame.

Auburn failed to get a run across in the top of the sixth to set up Florida’s game-winning bottom half.

Catanza, who hit a two-run homer in his last at-bat in the fourth, led off the sixth by ripping a double off the fence in left field. He then went to third on a wild pitch. Drafts ended the game by dropping a hit into shallow right to bring Catanza home.

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