Hawley pitcher turns out the lights on Eldorado in Game 3
Charles Bryce
When the lights went out late Friday night at Nathan Donsky Field, the Eldorado High School baseball team was coming to bat in the top of the seventh inning trailing Hawley by three runs in Game 3 of a Class 2A area playoff series.
It gave the Eagles a little more time to think about things with hard-throwing 6-foot-9 southpaw Tanner Gallimore on the hill.
About 20 minutes later, the lights came back on and the lefty finished off Eldorado, 8-5, to advance to the regional quarterfinals next week against Albany.
The Bearcats opened the series with a 7-5 win in Game 1 on Thursday, but the Eagles evened the series with a 7-6 eight-inning victory in Game 2 earlier Friday.
Eldorado took a 4-0 lead in the top of the third in Game 3, but the Bearcats got within 4-1 in the bottom half of the frame.
The big inning for Hawley was in the fourth when the Bearcats pushed four runs across to take a 5-4 advantage.
The Eagles knotted the contest at 5-5 in the fifth before Hawley replied with two in the bottom half of the frame and one more in the sixth for the final margin.
Hawley improved to 10-20. Eldorado finished 9-9.
The Eagles know their season won't be defined by Friday's loss.
"We had a late start because of the success we had in basketball season," Eldorado head coach William Robledo said. "We started about a month after everybody else.
"They worked their way up and they got better each game, and that's what we ask of them and they rose to the challenge."
Robledo told his players to hold their heads up high after the season-ending loss.
"Hawley's a good baseball team and we competed and made it a three-game series," the Eagles coach said.
The lights were apparently on a timer Friday night at Donsky and they went out when the clock struck 11 p.m.
"It could have been good for us and it could have been bad, but it was the same way for both sides," Robledo said.
It was a night that fans, players and officials won't soon forget.
"However you want to put it, it was a crazy ending to a crazy series," Hawley head coach Jamie Seago said. "Hats off to Eldorado. That's a heck of a baseball team over there.
"We're mirror images of each other. It could have gone either way, and luckily we pulled one out tonight."
It was a good thing the lights didn't go out when Gallimore was throwing heat.
"Oh yeah, he was bringing it," Robledo said with a smile.
The Hawley pitcher had some control problems at times, but still managed to handcuff the Eagles down the stretch.
"Tanner did a phenomenal job coming in," Seago said. "His pitch count got up, but we just kept battling and kept battling and finally took the lead.
"It was a great job by Tanner and a great job by (300-pound catcher) Kolter (Willeford) behind the dish. That big ol' boy was tired back there."
Gallimore looked like the high school version of Hall of Famer Randy Johnson.
"He's a tall drink of water, that's for dang sure," his skipper said.
Looking ahead to the regional quarters, Hawley will face a very familiar foe in 8-2A rival Albany.
"They were our district champs," Seago said of the Lions, who swept Ozona in the area round. "We're going back to our district, which I didn't really want to do, but here we are.
"It'll be a battle, hopefully. They're a dang good baseball team and they're ranked sixth in the state. We're just going to take our puppies over there and hope that the planets align and gravity and all that other stuff and see what we can do."
The good thing for Eldorado is that the Eagles will only lose three seniors to graduation -- David Barajas, Aidan Dennis and Mason Doan.
"We'll have some young guys coming up," Robledo said. "We're trying to build it up and hopefully baseball in Eldorado will be on the up and up."
Charles Bryce is a journalist covering sports in West Texas. Send him a news tip at cbryce@gannett.com. Consider supporting West Texas journalism with a subscription to GoSanAngelo.com.