May 17, 2007
Box Score
GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Charlie Bailes' two-out, two-run walk off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning powered Furman to a 4-2 win over The Citadel in the opener of a three-game Southern Conference baseball series Friday night at Furman Stadium.
Bailes, a redshirt freshman designated hitter, drilled the first pitch from Bulldog reliever Justin Smith over the left field fence to score Will Stembridge ahead of him and give Furman (18-34, 10-15 SoCon) its fourth straight victory and third win in the last four meetings with arch-rival The Citadel (29-24, 11-14 SoCon). The triumph moves Furman to within a game of the Bulldogs for seventh place in the league standings and within two games of fifth place Appalachian State and Georgia Southern, both of which dropped Thursday evening league games to fall to 12-13 in conference play.
Bailes' clout, his first of the season, made a winner of Paladin starting pitcher Matt Klinker (5-5), who threw his most impressive game of the season, going the route and allowing only three hits and no walks while striking out six.
Klinker's complete game, the first by a Paladin this season, lowered his earned run average to 2.17 over his last four appearances, spanning 29.0 innings. Two of his three hits allowed were solo home runs by Matt Arnold and Chance Smith, but the Paladin righthander proved especially dominant in the later innings, retiring the final 10 batters he faced and notching all six of his strikeouts after one out in the fith inning.
The Citadel's Wes Wrenn also threw effectively, working six inning and yielding just five hits and a run while striking out four and walking two before departing with a 2-1 lead.
Furman tied the game at 2-2 in the seventh after Joey Rodgers was hit by a pitch with two outs, stole second, and advanced to third on a throwing error by Bulldog catcher Richard Jones. Following a walk by Connor Lind, Rodgers scored from third before Lind was tagged out in a rundown while attempting to steal second.
In the ninth, Stembridge bounced a one-out single up the middle. After
Paul Ortenzo struck out, Bailes drilled Smith's first offering to him over the left center field fence for the game winner.
Smith (6-4) absorbed the loss after working 2 2/3 innings and giving up two hits and three runs, only two of which were earned. He walked one and struck out three.
Jay Jackson had two of Furman's seven hits, including an RBI single in the first inning off Wrenn that staked the Paladins to a 1-0 lead.
The Citadel knotted the game in the fourth on Smith's solo home run to left field, and the Bulldogs went up 2-1 in the fifth on a two-out home run to right field by Matt Arnold, who had two of The Citadel's three hits. Arnold's roundtripper, however, would prove to be the final base hit for the Bulldogs as Klinker faced the minimum of 13 batters the rest of the way, erasing the only base runner allowed during that stretch on a double play in the sixth inning.
The two teams play game two of the series Friday night at 7:00 p.m.
