By MONTE DUTTON

Sometimes the stars come together. Sometimes they line up. Sometimes they fall.

There’s an old Randy Travis song that notes that the ocean’s salty and the stars sometimes fall. The name of the song is “Deeper Than the Holler.” I wouldn’t call Clinton High School’s baseball field a holler., but it’s at the bottom of a hill.

In the bottom of the fifth inning on Thursday night, the Red Devils’ superb catcher, Luke Young, arrived at the plate with his brother Brett, who had singled, on second base, and Camden Finley on first, with one out, and Clinton trailing, 3-1.

It was the right man, at the right time, in the perfect situation, and, on a 1-1 count, Luke Young hit Carter Bouknight’s pitch right on the nose and right at the Batesburg-Leesville shortstop, Braydon Hallman, who turned it into a double play.

That was the moment that escaped into eternity.

The Panthers won, 7-1, and the Red Devils’ 10-game winning streak ended. Clinton went from the driver’s seat in the Class 2A playoffs to an elimination game on Saturday at home against Mid-Carolina (1 p.m.), which has beaten the Devils twice.

On that hellishly scorched ground ball, Clinton (21-7) went from the devil to the deep, blue sea. There were few opportunities in a game in which Bouknight (and Hallman, who retired the final two outs) apportioned the Red Devils only four hits: two by Brett Young, one by Camden Finley and one by William Addison.

Walks and errors were a wash. Addison laced a double for Clinton; Hallman had one for Batesburg-Leesville (20-5-1). The Panthers had two more hits … and six more runs. Tanner Watkins, Hallman and Landon Soper each had two hits.

Tanner Finley battled for six innings – six hits, five runs, three earned, three walks, five strikeouts – but took the loss.

The Clinton box said two errors apiece. The B-L box said three. The scoreboard said the Panthers had four. Both tablets agreed that neither had a stolen base and both had one thrown out at second.

Mid-Carolina (22-8) beat Clinton 3-0 on March 18 and 7-6 on March 21. Strom Thurmond whipped the Rebels, 5-3, on Thursday night. While Clinton was winning 10 in a row, Mid-Carolina was winning seven. Whichever loses Saturday will win no more.

Presbyterian women’s soccer standout Kelly Hall is among 12 Big South Conference athletes picked to receive the George A. Christenberry Award for b Excellence.

Typically, only 4.0’s are acceptable for Christenberry consideration.

Member institutions nominate one male and one female student-athlete for Christenberry review each year, or multiple student-athletes that tie for the highest GPA on their respective campus.

A business administration major, Hall is the 11^th Christenberry prize recipient and third to represent the PC women’s soccer program.

PC freshman Jeep Patrick shot rounds of 76-78-77=231, finishing 65^th in the NCAA Auburn men’s golf regional.

Patrick, who is from Hilton Head Island, was 27 shots behind the medalist, Jackson Koivun of Auburn.

Clinton won the Region 3-2A golf championship, defeating Mid-Carolina at Lakeside Country Club in a sudden-death tie-breaker after both schools shot 348.

Luke McMurray and Aiden Bragg each shot 81, followed by Gabi Carles at 91 and John Carles at 95.

Clinton’s state track meet participants are:

From the girls: Nahshia Wright, Mylayja Thompson, Camori Pyles, Elizabeth Reid, McKenzie Clark, Jada Floyd, Shylah Floyd and Symiah Floyd.

From the boys: Javen Cook, Bryson Perrin, William Reid, Jabari Dillard, Neal Brown and Nyterian Smith.

The NCAA could approve acrobatics & tumbling as a championship sport this summer, which means in turn that Presbyterian could participate in a national championship meet no sooner than 2027.

Everyone knows what a stickler I am. It mildly annoys me when I say “thank you” and someone says “thank you” back. The correct reply is “you’re welcome.” Hardly anyone ever says “you’re welcome” on TV or radio. “Thank you. “ “No, thank you.” “No, no, no. Thank you.”

The most likely place for a “you’re welcome” is the drive-through, and I appreciate it, particularly because the people who work there are only slightly more popular than umpires and referees. A lot of them say “I’m sorry you had to wait” even when I didn’t have to wait.

I never worked in a drive-through in my youth. I bagged a lot of groceries. They were paper bags, but I bagged them.

For the record, AI’s been counting change for at least 40 years. I remember paper straws and glass bottles. Nowadays bringing back the former would cause a wave of secession, and the latter would prevent dementia, either that or a progressive lowering of oxygen in the air. No one cares.

A heap of my books are available on Amazon.

In the 1940s, the majority of passenger cars did not have radios. I researched this when I was writing my novel Cowboys Come Home, set in 1946. I had to put a bad guy in a stolen Lincoln so he could keep up with what the cops were saying about him.

One novel of mine is titled The Audacity of Dope because it’s about a pot-smoking folksinger with lots of guts. At the time, I had just finished Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope. It was sitting on the table when I was trying to come up with a title.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has nothing to do with gays in the military.

My coverage of Laurens County and Furman University sports is likely going to end with Clinton High School baseball, at least in a comprehensive sense. I’ll still write the occasional feature. As Clayton Delaney said about playing music, “Ain’t no money in it … it’ll lead you to an early grave” Well, that’s what Tom T. Hall sang he said.