By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — The current World Series has been mostly about the bats of Corey Seager and his slugging Texas teammates, but the player who did the most to squeeze the Rangers through the playoff gauntlet and into the World Series was a 30-year old left-hander named Jordan Montgomery.

Former Rowan County American Legion players and coach Jim Gantt will never forget Montgomery, a native of Sumter, S.C. Montgomery was 16 in the summer of 2009 when they faced him twice in a span of five days.

Led by MVP Trey Holmes, Rowan County won the state tournament that summer. Holmes slugged his 14th homer, Rowan’s 60th of the summer in the state tournament finale, a 5-3 Rowan victory against Shelby.

Rowan was 32-7 at that point and boasted a stout lineup and a deep pitching staff.

Forrest Buchanan, Nick Smith, Parker Gobbel, Billy Veal and Corbin Shive were still undefeated on the mound as Rowan players packed their suitcases for the Southeast Regional at historic Riley Park in Sumter, S.C., home of the Sumter P-15s, the dominant American Legion program in South Carolina.

“It was a hot August day when several of us Legion fans made the journey of more than two hours to Sumter,” Terry Julian remembers. “Rowan had just won its seventh state title. Rowan was playing against the host team (Sumter) in the first round, rather than one of the state champs, and we figured that game was already in the bag. We had quality offensive production from up and down the lineup and a great pitching staff.”

When Rowan fans arrived in Sumter they found out that Gantt would be sending Shive, Rowan’s ace, to the mound against a tall lefty who was a rising junior at Sumter High.

“The kid looked tall, but we figured that was about all,” Julian said.

But the kid was Montgomery, He wasn’t 6-foot-6 yet. He still had some growing to do. But the game became one of the stellar pitching duels in Rowan’s storied Legion history.

“Both pitchers were mowing down batters at about the same pace,” Julian said.

Neither team got a baserunner to second base until the fifth inning.

Montgomery struck out nine, but he was on a strict pitch count mandated by a physician. When Montgomery left the game after seven tense innings, there was still no score.

Rowan finally did score against Sumter’s bullpen on Jon Crucitti’s two-out single in the top of the ninth.

Shive had a 1-0 lead and he had a one-hitter going. But now he had to finish what he’d started.

He nearly didn’t. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Sumter got back-to-back singles.  Coach Gantt headed to the mound.

Shive had never lost a Legion game and Gantt knew he didn’t deserve to lose this one. He told Shive the bullpen was ready.

“I really didn’t want Shive to come out of the game with a loss as well as he had pitched, but I felt like once we got in that situation in the ninth it was his game to win or lose,” Gantt said. “He wanted to stay out there.”

Shive threw a first-pitch changeup to the next hitter that was greeted by a vicious swing and a foul ball. Shive got ahead 0-and-2 and got the final out of the game on a lazy fly ball to left field. Russell Michaelec squeezed it, and Rowan owned a 1-0 win.

Always stoic, Shive strolled off the mound after throwing 111 pitches for Rowan’s first complete game of the summer.

As he neared the third-base dugout, he calmly turned left and joined the handshake line like he hadn’t done anything special. The scoreboard behind him, however, was littered with zeroes and told a different story.

It had been an incredible game played on a Thursday night.

“I thought it was a great spectator game, and I certainly didn’t like the outcome,” said Dr. Wallie Jones, the dentist who coached Sumter. “It was two heavyweight pitchers going at each other.”

Rowan lost 8-7 the next day to the Alabama champs from Tuscaloosa, who were 51-6, and fell into the losers bracket.

The next day Rowan pounded the South Carolina champs from Irmo-Chapin 15-0 with Holmes driving in five runs.

Holmes drove in four more the next day and Smith pitched brilliantly in a 13-0 victory against Conyers, Ga.

Now it was Monday. Sumter also was still alive in the double-elimination tournament, and Shive and Montgomery locked horns for the second time.

Rowan won 10-6, but that’s misleading.

The game was tied 2-all in the sixth. That’s when Rowan put together the six-run inning that knocked out Montgomery.

Matt Miller came back from an 0-and-2 count and drew the walk with the bases loaded that put Rowan ahead to stay and got Montgomery out of the game.

“After I got down 0-2, I just tried to keep fouling stuff off and make him pitch to me instead of chasing stuff,” Miller said. “He was locating his breaking ball really good. When you have a pitcher locating a breaking ball, once you get down 0-2, it’s going to be tough to come back and get a walk.”

Philip Miclat greeted a reliever with a two-run double and scored on a single by Preston Troutman. Holmes then belted a two-run homer to center field.

Rowan was ahead 10-3 when Shive left the game. He hadn’t felt as a strong as he did in the regional opener, but he’d mixed his pitches well. He threw more curves and changeups.

“I didn’t feel as good as I did in the first game, but I felt good enough to go out there and get the job done,” Shive said.

Holmes, a  lefty hitter, went 0-for-6 against Montgomery, but in both games, he got hits after Sumter went to the bullpen.