Northside’s J.D. Mundy kept pitching away and the Viking batters kept chipping away.
Unfortunately for the Cave Spring Knights, Mundy continued to get stronger and the Northside offense turned into a buzz saw.
Riding a stellar performance on the mound by their sophomore starter, Northside ran away with the 17-0 non-district baseball victory Saturday afternoon at Salem Memorial Stadium, home of the Salem Red Sox.
It was a sharp turnaround for a Cave Spring team that had defeated Carroll County 10-3 twenty-four hours earlier on the arm of Thomas Forest, and beaten this same Viking nine 2-1 less than a week ago.
“That’s baseball,” Northside head coach Ed Culicerto pointed out after the game. “J.D. did a good job on the mound and it became contagious with our hitters.”
Northside played small ball in the early going, getting single runs in four of the first five innings. Cave Spring offered some help, with fielding errors and a Knight battery that was plagued all afternoon by wild pitches and passed balls.
The Vikings scored in the first off an error, walk, wild pitch and sacrifice fly. In the third and fourth, two-out hits plated single runs and Northside added a single tally in the fifth on a fielder’s choice ground out.
Meanwhile, Mundy was in a groove on the hill and the Viking defense was virtually flawless.
“The defense had my back all day,” Mundy noted afterward. “I was having success hitting my spots.”
It would be hard to argue that assessment. In throwing the first shutout of his high school career, Mundy needed only 64 pitches to pick up the complete-game win, allowing only 3 hits. In the sixth he put the Knights down on five pitches.
Although the Knights kept battling and only trailed 4-0 heading to the sixth, the wheels quickly came off as Northside plated three runs in the sixth and pounded out 10 more in the top of the seventh.
Mundy helped himself out by reaching base on all five of his plate appearances, including two doubles, a single, walk and being hit by a pitch. The remaining Northside attack was dominated by singles, with Josh Hardister collecting 4 RBIs and Daniel Brammer knocking in a pair.
Cave Spring’s three hits came from Sam Walker, Cole Flora and Brett Meyers.
Northside improved to 6-1 while the Knights fell to 3-5 on the season.
Bill Turner
