Dix's Dinger Propels NAFD/NAPD to League Title
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| Anna Dix touches home after hitting a walk-off home run in Tuesday's title game. |
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – Anna Dix really cleaned up on Tuesday night.
The NAFD/NAPD catcher went 4-for-4 at the plate and ended the championship game of the North Adams Women’s Softball League with a three-run home run to left to give her team an 12-9 walk-off win over Belle Ame Lashes.
Then, Dix literally cleaned up, grabbing a couple of the bases and putting them in the Disanti Field storage shed before joining her teammates for a team picture at home plate to celebrate the win.
“Usually, it’s the home team that brings them in,” she said afterward.
Sure, but the player of the game who just clinched a league title with one swing of the bat?
“I’m just that person,” Dix said with a shrug. “I like to clean up after playing and all that stuff.”
She and her North Adams Fire Department/North Adams Police Department teammates trailed, 8-6, midway through the fifth inning and again, 9-7, with three outs left to go.
But Abby Lear singled to left to lead off the bottom of the seventh, and she went to third when Allie Lilly followed with a single.
Heather Morris then dropped her second hit of the game into center field, scoring Lear and getting the team within a run. Carrie Brassard drew a walk to load the bases, but she was erased when Cheyanne Alcombright delivered an RBI and reached on a fielder’s choice to put two on with one out.
That brought Dix to the plate.
“I was thinking this is it or it’s nothing,” Dix said. “It was all or nothing for me, and it’s always been like that, and it’s gonna always stay like that.”
This time, she got all of it, launching the ball over the fence and chasing her teammates around the bases to end the game.
“That was actually my first home run this season, and it’s also my first season playing [in the league],” the former Drury Blue Devil said. “So it’s definitely an accomplishment, especially against the Lashes, it definitely felt amazing to get my first home run.”
Lashes started the game with a pair of runs in the first, putting Monday’s 5-4 loss in the opener of the championship round behind them with RBIs from Ashton Smead and Jocelyn Duhamel.
NAFD/NAPD answered in a big way with a six-run rally that featured two-run singles from Alcombright and Leah Palermo.
After falling into a 6-2 hole, Lashes pitcher Duhamel and her defense settled down, holding NAFD/NAPD off the scoreboard for three innings.
Meanwhile, Lashes’ offense got an RBI single from Morgan Kierstead in a two-run second and run-scoring singles from Duhamel, Morgan Shafer and Melissa Girard in the third to take a 7-6 lead.
Girard worked an RBI walk in the fifth to give Lashes an insurance run, but NAFD/NAPD got that one back in the bottom of the frame when Alcombright singled and went to second on an errant throw before scoring on Dix’s single up the middle to make it 8-7.
In the top of the seventh, Lashes got some insurance Jackie Larochelle singled and eventually scored on Logan Stansfield’s RBI single to left. NAFD/NAPD pitcher Kenzie Dobbert then left the bases loaded by getting a groundball out to the left side, keeping it a two-run game and setting the stage for her team’s last at-bat comeback.
“The mood going to the bottom of the seventh? We were definitely like, ‘This is it,’ “ Dix said. “We need to do it. If this is not our time, then it’s not our time to win. But we were starting to amp up again, and we kind of decided: Just base hits, just get on base, and that’s what gets us runs.”
