MALDEN - Bottom of the seventh, two outs, down by one, the tying run on second, and freshman Drew Blankenship stepped up to the plate.
Representing the winning run and the person who would send Malden baseball deeper into the postseason than it had ever been, or perhaps the final out, Blankenship knelt down and prayed.
"Right before I got up to bat I bent down and prayed to God to help me through it," Blankenship said. "I almost passed out when I scored, then I fell down."
The freshman dove head first into first base and feet first across home as Malden scored five runs, all with two outs, in the bottom of the seventh inning to beat Scott City 8-7 in the first round of the MSHSAA Class 3 state playoffs Monday at Malden.
The Green Wave, making their first appearance ever in the quarterfinals, will face the winner of West County (16-4) and Hancock (14-9), who play today at 3 p.m.
Malden (23-5) didn't have a hit until Gavin Bristow doubled and scored in the fifth inning, but all he did was cut Scott City's lead to 7-1 going into the sixth.
Then Dee Triplett, who struck out in the fourth inning, cranked a two-run home run to right field to score Tye Miller and cut the lead to four.
"He struck me out on the pitch last time, so I was thinking since he struck me out with that pitch -- and I jumped on it," Triplett said.
After a fly out to start the seventh, Scott City (18-12) made a pair of error with the bottom of Malden's lineup due at the plate.
Starter Bryan McNeely got his seventh and final strikeout, bringing No. 9 hitter Dushawn Butler to the plate.
Butler, who hadn't played competitive baseball since seventh grade, connected for a hard line drive to the gap and the speedster legged out a two-run double despite falling down rounding first.
Tye Miller followed with another double, cutting the lead to one and bringing Blankenship to the plate.
After his prayer, Blankenship hit a ground ball toward short, raced for first and dove head first for the bag in a bang-bang play. Both coaches said they felt the call could have gone either way.
"I've been on the other side of those plays, and I've been on the other side of those calls. I hate it for Scott City. They had a heck of a year," Harmon said.
That put the tying run on third and brought Triplett to the plate, who Scott City intentionally walked, loading the bases for Bristow.
"I'd probably put him on there, too, but it puts a lot of pressure on your pitcher," Harmon said. "We've told (Bristow) all year long, there's going to come a game where you are going to have to win it for us. They are going to put Triplett on base."
Bristow got a pair of balls and hit a hard ground ball just past the third baseman, tying the game and putting Blankenship on third base.
Harmon told the freshman that Scott City's catcher was a third-string freshman and he should be ready for a passed ball. Harmon went into the game thinking Malden would get a couple passed balls, but Scott City hadn't given one up all game.
At the plate, Mason Brown, who flew out to start the inning, worked a 1-2 count before spinning around to avoid getting hit by a pitch. It grazed the catcher's glove and went to the backstop as Blankenship, who wasn't being held on at third, turned his big lead into a dead sprint.
"I just got tunnel vision, I looked at the base, looked down at my leg, I ran and I slid, that's all I saw," Blankenship said.
He scored easily and didn't make it far before the Green Wave dog pile found him.
Malden struggled at the plate through five innings. The Scott City outfield didn't make an out until the end of the fifth. In the fourth, McNeely struck out the side, and the first three in the Malden lineup at that.
The Green Wave brought 10 batters to the plate in the seventh inning and 12 through the first five.
"We said coming in, we knew (McNeely) was going to have a good game, we had to catch the balls that were hit to us and we were going to have to have good at bats, and we really didn't have good at bats. A lot of those runs were given to us as gifts," Scott City coach Jim May said. "We swung at so many pitches out of the zone and got ourselves out so many times that we probably should have put the game away early on."
Scott City scored its first two runs in the top of the first inning of bases-loaded walks by Brown, who was effectively wild through his 4 1/3 innings with three hits and six walks against with eight strikeouts.
In the fifth, Malden committed a pair of errors and walked two more as Scott City tacked on five runs to go ahead 7-0.
Tye Miller took the mound after Scott City went ahead 3-0 and immediately allowed a pair of two-run hits, but finished the game and got the win after allowing four hits, a hit batter and no walks with four strikeouts in total.
"I'm proud of this team. They weren't supposed to be very good. We graduated six senior starters last year and they've battled and went places nobody thought we were going to go," May said. "It's a tough way to lose, but those guys have brought home three district championships and made two final four runs. They've had a great career, so I'm very proud of them."