By MONTE DUTTON

I’m going to miss Young Sheldon.

Them’s my people.

Tonight I played in front of people at The Lumberyard’s open jam. I like it because people sometimes listen. The local musicians shared with PC biology scholars, and I took one for the team because I needed to get home to pay attention to ballgames being played.

Between me and people I knew was a Phil Spector Wall of Sound consisting of college students saying omigod. I did have one tell me he enjoyed the Tom Petty song, which I took as a compliment because I didn’t play a Tom Petty song but did sing two of my own.

A man can dream, right?

My best friend was on the disabled list. I busted a string on the Pawless, so I took the Little Martin I originally bought because I could carry it on planes.

Meh.

I played my guitar till I broke a string / My voice so shot I almost couldn’t sing.

I imitated George Jones singing John Prine. No one noticed.

You win some. You lose some.

It looks like Mee-Maw isn’t going to jail.

Now to the rest of my life. Ballgames. Bills. Deadlines and commitments. The games are coming in like election results. The newspapers used to pay the sports guys double because they were the ones who could handle deadline pressure.

Gone with the wind.

Greenville collected 19 hits, and Laurens committed nine errors. It’s not a formula for softball success.

The Red Raiders soundly defeated the regular ones in green, 16-5, on Thursday evening.

Greenville scored two runs in the second, and the raiding got progressively worse for Laurens (7-9), which no sooner scored two runs than the Red Raiders added five in the fourth inning, three in the sixth and four in the seventh.

It overpowered the virtuosity of Laurens shortstop Carly Edwards, who doubled and singled three times in four at-bats. Addison’s only hit was a triple. Azaria Johnson rapped two singles in four at-bats.

Summer Nations toiled gamely but in vain six innings for the Raiders.

Greenville (17-7) exploded eight doubles among its 19 safeties, three of them by Julianna Lopez in five tries. She scored four runs. Four Red Raiders each had three hits.

Leighton Borders and Vivi Whitfield shared the Greenville circle time.

Region 4-3A boys tennis champion Clinton breezed toward the playoffs with a 4-2 non-region victory over Aiken on Wednesday.

The Red Devils (8-1) open the postseason at home next Tuesday.

Clinton 4, Aiken 2

# 1 Singles, Nathan Meade defeated Henry Vaughters  6 – 1, 6 – 1; # 2 Singles, Edwin Orr defeated  Joseph Burch  6 – 1, 6 – 0; # 3 Singles, Matthew King defeated  Aiden McLwain  6 – 2, 7 – 5; # 4 Singles, Jacob King defeated Kylo Tucker  6 – 0, 6 – 0; # 5 Singles, Malakye Brewer lost to Alex Jammolt 4 – 6, 6 – 4, (10 – 8).

# 1 Doubles did not play; # 2 Doubles, Brady Mason & Ethan Wargo lost to Brinkly Johnson & Brian Balyzck  6 – 3, 4 – 6, (10 – 7)

It’s hard for a baseball loss to be much tougher than Laurens Academy’s on Thursday evening.

As Tommy Lee Jones said of the mess in No Country for Old Men, “It’ll do till the mess gets here.”

High Point Academy (7-7) won, 10-9, and the Crusaders walked, literally, into an ambush in the bottom of the seventh inning.

The first batter, Isaac Ross, reached on an error, and the winning run scored when the last batter, Chris Codespoti, reached on another. In between, four batters walked, one of whom was picked off first.

Ross had two of the Grizzlies’ six singles. There was a bit of a disparity in the stats. The visiting Crusaders had High Point with three hits and themselves with eight errors.

The hearty Hardys, Hack and Caleb, each doubled for Laurens Academy (5-7). They each had a single, too., in three at-bats.

The third of four LA pitchers, Elias Littleton, took the loss.

Bryant Burns, who allowed seven hits and runs (four earned) in three innings, got the win, anyway.

Clinton (9-40 swamped Emerald, 9-0, in junior-varsity baseball in the home valley.

Four Red Devils – Talan Campbell, Owen Glenn, Avery Barnes and Matthew Hardick – each claimed a pair of hits, and Barnes drove in three runs as the Devils scored three runs in the first inning, four in the second, one in the third and one in the sixth.

Vargas and Campbell slammed doubles.

Five pitchers divided up the shutout. Campbell hurled the first two innings and struck out four. The firm of Campbell, Watkins (Graydon), Vargas (Angel), Glenn (Owen) & Dickson (Kaleb) litigated 13 strikeouts.

Levi Archibald (L), former to toe the rubber for the Vikings (5-10), gave way to Bently Minick in the fourth inning.

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