Monday was the opening day of play for high school baseball in the Chattanooga area, but it didn't look like baseball weather and it didn't feel much like it either.
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish hosted the Grace Academy Golden Eagles at Hunter Field and the Irish pulled out the 6-5 win, but they had to hold on for dear life at the end to do so.
Notre Dame scored single runs in each of the first three innings before tacking on three more in the fourth,
The Golden Eagles finally got on the board with a solo run in the third, but the hosts were cruising along to what looked like an easy win before the Golden Eagles came to bat in the sixth.
Sending 10 batters to the plate, Grace scored four runs on three hits, two hits, one hit batter and one error. Austin Henry had led off the inning with a bloop infield hit and had scored the first run. He had a chance to be the hero on his second time to bat that inning, but a line drive down the third base line with the bases loaded was foul by less than a foot.
And facing Notre Dame reliever Logan McCallie with a 3-2 count, McCallie got a called third strike to end the threat.
Alex Darras, who started the game at shortstop for the Irish, came on to pitch the final frame and got the visitors in order to preserve the win.
"I'm just glad that we were finally able to get on the field," said Notre Dame coach Greg Elie shortly after the game ended.
"I was more interested in seeing how we'd react in today's game and things just happened to work out our way. I'm really happy with how we played as I thought we had a good approach all the way around.
"I feel like we have a chance to have a pretty good team, but we just need to be able to find our rhythm. We're all so tired of being inside, so this was a positive thing for all of us," he added.
Grace coach Jeff Reese had similar feelings. Despite a light rain that fell the entire game, he was just happy for his kids to face live pitching for the first time this spring.
"That was a heck of a game, but I'm so proud of these kids because of the resilience they showed today," Reese said shortly after the final out had been recorded.
"We've only been on the field four times and I thought we'd make a bunch of errors, but we played pretty well. We're capable of playing good baseball and we'll have our day, but we were a hit away from tying and possibly winning this game," he added.
Starting pitcher Gage Miller worked five innings for Notre Dame and allowed one run on one hit. He walked four, had seven strikeouts and appeared to get stronger as the game went along.
He also picked up Notre Dame's first hit in the first and scored the first run on a Grace error.
Andrew Lewis led off the second with a double and scored on a single by Calvin Sims as the Irish lead stretched to 2-0 before Darras led off the third with a single, stole second and went to third on a wild pitch before scoring the third run on a sacrifice fly by Jonathan Polcari.
Andrews singled to lead off the fourth and scored on a long double by Darras, who scored shortly after on the second error of the day by the Golden Eagles that allowed Polcari to reach. Patrick Johnson's RBI-single drove in Polcari and things were looking good at 6-1 through five innings.
Henry led off the sixth for Grace with a single and scored on a long double by Andrew Godsey. Zach Dean was hit by a pitch, went to second on a wild pitch and scored on a single by Jared Thompson. The third run scored on a Notre Dame error while Thompson scored on a bases-loaded walk to Caleb Sanders to make it 6-5.
That's when McCallie got the biggest strikeout of his young career to prevent any further damage by the Golden Eagles.
Andrews, Darras and Lewis all had two hits apiece for Notre Dame while Henry was the only Grace player with two hits.
Notre Dame is supposed to play at Whitwell on Tuesday while Grace will be taking part in the Wildcat Classic at Hixson later in the week.
GRACE 001 004 0 -- 5 4 2
NOTRE DAME 111 300 x -- 6 10 1
Dean, Walls (4) and Jensen; Miller, Polcari (6), McCallie (6), Darras (7) and Johnson.
(email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@Comcast.net)