‘Not smart baseball’
- Updated: July 26, 2025
Monsters fall behind on errors, slow-starting offense, fall to Crackers in 10 innings in Game 1 of Sunbelt semifinal series.
By Joe Medley
East Alabama Sports Today
OXFORD — The Choccolocco Monsters dominated the Sunbelt League regular season, earning the league’s top seed and a quarterfinal bye in the playoffs.
After Friday’s Game 1 of their best-of-3 semifinal series, they stand one loss away from elimination.
Five errors and five innings of Jacob Autry dominance on the mound put the Monsters behind by four runs, and Tyler Jackson’s RBI single in the top of the 10th made the difference as the Atlanta Crackers won 6-5 at Choccolocco Park to lead the series 1-0.
The two teams will play in Atlanta on Saturday. Semifinal winners advance to next week’s finals, and the Monsters hope to defend their league title.
“All glory to God,” Monsters coach Ricky Ray Clayton said, offering his standard opening comment. “Without Him, we wouldn’t be in this situation, and we’re still in a good situation.
“We go up there and play them tomorrow, and we’ve got two good arms going. We get 24 hours to regroup and play better baseball. We didn’t play good at all today and still had every opportunity to win that ballgame.”
Friday started with a 90-minute weather delay as a thunderstorm passed through Oxford, and the Monsters seemed to suffer their own delay after play started. Five errors helped the Crackers lead 4-0 through the top of the sixth inning.
Meanwhile, Autry had a perfect game underway until Jace Turner beat out a ground ball for an infield single in the bottom of the sixth.
The Monsters got on the board in the sixth, when LaDorian Jordan hit a leadoff double, moved third base on Peyton Watts’ one-out single and scored on Caden Mason’s sacrifice fly to close to within 4-1.
Caleb Huffman’s RBI triple pushed the Crackers back out to a 5-1 lead in the seventh, but the Monsters rallied for four runs in the eighth inning. Melvin Blocker’s two-run single tied the game at 5-5 and forced extra innings and the international tiebreaker.
Still tied in the ninth, the Monsters had the bases loaded with two outs. Nick McCord went down on a called third strike, prompting an argument from Clayton as the coach made his way back to the dugout.
“No comment,” Clayton said after the game.
With the international tiebreaker in play in the 10th inning, Jackson singled home the go-ahead run for the Crackers.
The Monsters started their 10th inning at bat with McCord at second base, and Turner popped out on an attempted sacrifice bunt. That turned into a 2-6 double play as McCord had strayed off of second base.
“It’s not smart baseball, bottom line,” Clayton said. “You talk about stuff all the time, the things that can play out. The biggest thing with a bunt is make sure you see it down. I’m not sure what happened.
“It just wasn’t good baseball. It’s not our style of baseball. We didn’t start playing until the fifth or sixth inning. We didn’t have a base runner until the sixth.”
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