Booth, Bob Jones get the best of cross-city rival James Clemens for sweep
By CALEB ODOM (caleb@themadisonrecord.com)
MADISON — The Bob Jones baseball team swept away cross-town rival James Clemens with a pair of victories at home on Saturday.
Game 2 of the three-game series was played at Bob Jones where the Patriots opened it up with the bats to win convincingly 9-5.
Ben Arn tossed six innings for the Patriots allowing six hits and five runs with six strikeouts.
“They are a good-hitting team, but we found ways to get them out,” Arn said.
Bob Jones relied on the offensive production from Braden Booth, who was on a mission to punish his James Clemens friends and anybody else who got in his way.
The third basemen collected a double, a walk and a decisive 2-run home run in the bottom of the fourth inning that gave the Patriots the lead for good.
CJ Bush also stood out for Bob Jones with a walk, a single and a sixth inning 2-run double.
“This game is very important to us because we always want to beat the team across the city,” Booth said.
“Most people are friends with everybody over there, on the field we are just always trying to beat each other.”
The thumbs down signs were out early and often when the Bob Jones players would get a hit and celebrate by looking at the Patriot dugout.
The Jets struck first in the top of the second when first baseman Satchel Wheeler drove in Ty Marsh and Aidan Cook with his clutch 2-run double.
“Really that’s all you can do,” Wheeler said.
“You have just got to go out there, do what you can do, hit the ball and put it in play and hope you get a hit. Hope it gets through and let those guys score.”
The Patriots answered with two runs of their own in the bottom of the second.
When James Clemens tallied two more runs in the top of the third inning, it began to feel like this was maybe the game that the Jets were going to take over.
But Bob Jones had other ideas.
“I don’t know, we started off doing alright,” Jets centerfielder Aidan Cook said.
“We got runs on the board and it just came down to they hit better.”
Down 4-2 in the bottom of the third, the Patriots scored another run when Bush knocked in Sammy Vander Hill who had led off the inning with a triple.
The Booth 2-run jack in the fourth gave Bob Jones the 5-4 lead in the fifth inning.
Things got ugly in the fifth as the Patriots scored four more runs to essentially pull away in this one 9-4.
One bright spot late in the game for the road Jets was a solo home run by Ty Marsh, but Bob Jones claimed a second victory in the series.
For more about this 3-game set and a feature about the aces Sam Mitchell of Bob Jones and Luke Davenport of James Clemens, be sure to read the Madison Record print edition on Wednesday, April 26.
