Piedmont, AL – Senior’s first-ever home run, a grand slam, keys Piedmont’s Game 1 victory over Gordo in third-round 3A playoff series; Game 3 set for Friday
By Joe Medley
Red Bull “gives you wings,” but Mountain Dew must give Sloan Smith power.
The Piedmont senior hit his first home run on any level Thursday, a grand slam that keyed the Bulldogs’ comeback to beat Gordo 7-6 in Game 1 of their third-round Class 3A playoff series at Piedmont.
After Gordo won the nightcap of the best-of-3 series 1-0, Smith’s grand slam stood up as the biggest single reason why Piedmont made it to today’s 2 p.m. Game 3.
“After the game, I said, ‘Dadgum, Sloan, what did you eat?’” Piedmont coach Matt Deerman said. “He said, ‘I’ve just been drinking a lot of Mountain Dew.’”
Nicknamed “Ice Man” for his cool under pressure, Smith stirred the drink when Piedmont needed it most Thursday.
Gordo scored four runs in the top of the first and another in the third to take a 5-0 lead going into the Piedmont fourth.
An error on Cole Wilson’s bases-loaded grounder and Cole Austin’s shot to the wall, popped in and out of sprinting Gordo left fielder Landon Fike’s glove, closed the gap to 5-2.
The near catch at the wall forced runners to wait, so bases remained loaded for Smith, and he barreled it 315 feet, over the fence in the left-field corner, to give Piedmont a 6-5 lead.
“Coach told me to be heads up for the squeeze call, but I really didn’t want to,” Smith said. “I was looking for a ball to drive and got one over the middle half of the plate, put a good swing on it.
“I’ve never known what one looks like going out, but it was pretty cool.”
Piedmont needed all six of its fourth-inning runs and one more, McClane Mohon’s RBI single in the sixth inning, to get through Game 1.
The Bulldogs also withstood a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the seventh. Jack Hayes, who started the inning in relief, got a strikeout and had a 1-2 count on Brady Jones when Deerman summoned Kale Austin to the mound. Austin got Jones to ground out to end it.
Gordo extended the series on the strength of Brax Garrison’s sacrifice fly in the fourth inning of Game 2. Garrison’s pop to center field plated the only run in a pitching duel between Gordo’s Austin Baines and Piedmont’s Cole Austin.
Still, Smith’s lifetime first remained the talk of the balllpark after the day’s action. It won him hugs from several current and former teammates, including Easton Kirk, who parlayed home-run power into a successful college career at Troy.
Current teammate Jack Hayes, one of Smith’s closest friends, called Smith’s grand slam “a pretty cool experience.”
“He hasn’t always been the biggest, so I mean, we never really expected him to hit home runs,” Hayes said. “I guess it’s the Mountain Dew he’s been drinking.”
Smith said he’s “developed a weird obsession with Mountain Dew” and drinks “four or five cans a day.”
“It’s always been my thing,” he said. “I turkey hunt a lot and love Mountain Dew in the morning.”
He called his grand-slam moment “pretty surreal.”
“In this atmosphere, especially, it’s real cool,” he said. “That I got to do it in front of everybody here, senior year, is pretty neat.”
