Texico rallies to top Rams

TEXICO — The rock band Kansas famously sang "Dust in the Wind," which would've been a good theme song for Tuesday's Portales-Texico baseball game.

There was certainly plenty of dust and wind throughout. But amid the gusts and the bending trees there was a pretty good area matchup, a battle between the 4A Rams and 3A Wolverines at Texico Field. A pretty good area matchup, that is, until the Wolves broke things open in the bottom of the fifth and earned a run-rule 12-2 victory.

Scoreless through 3 1/2 innings and only 3-2 Texico after 4 1/2, the Wolverines plated nine in the bottom of the fifth to end it and improve to 16-1.

"Just like any other game, you've gotta play to win. So we came out there and we executed," said Texico senior first baseman Nate Phipps, who had three RBIs, including a two-run homer in the fourth that broke the scoreless tie. "We had our bumps. We got through a couple of mental errors ... we showed our grit."

"I thought that we played a little bit tight, a little bit slow early in the game and let them kind of dictate the pace of the game," Texico coach Ty Thatcher said. "I felt like both starting pitchers did a good job of making pitches and doing what they needed to do. The difference being, we had a senior on the mound and they had a freshman on the mound."

The Texico senior was Ben Crist, who rang up 11 strikeouts, fanned the Portales side twice, and scattered seven hits. The Rams freshman was Brent Mitchell, who not only worked three scoreless innings, he kept the Wolverines hitless over that span.

The first hit off Mitchell came from Texico's Cole Rohrbach, who led off the bottom of the fourth with a long single to left field. Up next was Phipps, who hit one that didn't sound too dangerous off the bat, and looked more like a lazy fly ball to left-center as it sailed through the air. It carried, however, over the fence for a two-run homer.

"A couple of push-ups, lucky wind," Phipps said of his blast.

His teammates weren't finished that inning. Crist followed with an infield single, and Luke Phipps followed that with a single through the left side of the infield.

Mitchell was able to notch a strikeout and then a force out at second base, but the Rams tried to complete the double play after the out at second, resulting in an overthrow past first that allowed Crist to score and make it a 3-0 game.

Portales, though, bounced back quickly in the top of the fifth. Baylor Diaz led off by reaching on an error, and soon stole second base. Freshman Chandon Neece then tripled to deep right field, scoring Diaz with the Rams' first run.

With Jordan Garcia batting, a pitch that got away and went to the backstop sent Neece home to bring Portales within 3-2. Garcia wound up beating out an infield single and stealing second to put the tying run in scoring position. Crist, who already had one strikeout in the inning, managed to get another one and inch closer to escaping with the lead, but Garcia took third on a passed ball, moving Portales that much closer to tying it.

Crist, though, rang up his 11th strikeout of the day, whiffing the side and ending Portales' half of the fifth with Texico's 3-2 edge still intact.

Then came the Wolverines' half, which saw them bat around and then some. In all, 13 Wolves came to the plate.

After issuing consecutive walks to start the inning, Mitchell was relieved by Trevor Whitting, who was greeted by a Rohrbach bloop single to shallow center field, loading the bases.

The scoring surge began when Nate Phipps then walked to force Brayden Wines across. A Crist sacrifice fly made it 5-2, a two-run double by Cian Holmes stretched it to 7-2, and Brock Thompson's two-run triple to the gap in left-center put Texico up 9-2.

At that point the Wolves had batted around, chasing Whitting from the game. The next reliever, Neece, faced Wines on the latter's second at-bat of the inning, and Wines delivered a first-pitch RBI double that gave Texico a 10-2 advantage.

Robin Winton followed with an RBI double of his own, and after Dalton Thatcher walked, Rohrbach ended it with an RBI single.

"Baseball's a game of momentum. They had momentum," Portales coach Dusty Nusser said after his team fell to 10-8. "But we'll be OK."