Three-run homer helped secure win for Cartersville

BANGOR – This one was simply gone with the wind.

With apologies to Margaret Mitchell, what else can you say about a memorable home run – by a player from Georgia, no less – riding a jet stream some 390 feet out to right field and well over the scoreboard?

And this was certainly not a story without drama and subplots on Mansfield Stadium’s Georgia (and other states) clay at the Senior League World Series championship game.

Consider that the U.S. South champions from Cartersville, Ga., had never been to the SLWS before, and were facing Falcon, Venezuela – two-time Latin America champs and defending SLWS champion.

Throw in the fact that 15-year-old Colton Montgomery – the No. 8 batter in Cartersville’s lineup – stepped into the batter’s box in the fourth inning of Saturday’s title game with just one hit in his previous 13 at-bats.

Pretty good lead-in, huh? It gets better.

With Cartersville clinging to a 1-0 lead, Montgomery worked the count full before guessing the next pitch perfectly and belting it high into a steady, swirling and changing wind that vexed fielders and batters alike all day and watched the ball rise higher and sail farther.

“It was 3-2, so I knew it was going to be an outside fastball because the pitcher, he was just hitting his spots perfect and I knew that’s where he’d go,” Montgomery said. “When I hit it, I knew I hit it enough. I knew the wind was going to take it and I saw them running, but it just kept going.”

Brad Green, who went back to second to tag up, was just hoping to move over to third.

“I was hoping it would at least be a sacrifice fly the way the outfielder was looking at it, but after it went over, I just started jogging,” he said.

The three-run homer was the second of the postseason for Montgomery and his fifth overall this season.

“On another team, he’d be up higher in the lineup because the kid can hit,” Cartersville manager Eric Stewart said. “Everyone on the team can hit. The kids on the bench can hit.”

Although it wasn’t the game-winning hit, it was certainly the game-defining one as it appeared to take some of the starch out of the Venezuelans and inject fire and more confidence in the Georgians, who would score three more runs in the sixth en route to a 9-0 win.

“I’m extremely happy for him, especially since he’s one of the youngest guys on the team,” said Green. “He’d been having a little trouble at the plate, so that was great to see.”

Montgomery’s shot also validated Stewart’s choice to have his players try to hit with the wind to right field.

“It took some adjustment, but it worked in our favor,” Stewart said. “They [Falcon] kept throwing the ball away, away away, so when we started going to right field, it worked out for us. That ball Colton hit got taken by the wind.”

The wind also required Cartersville to adjust in the field.

“The line drives weren’t affected, but if you got it up in the air, it went all over the place,” Stewart explained. “So we just didn’t play as deep as we normally would.”

That wasn’t the only adjustment.

“We just had to communicate a lot more than usual, just to back each other up and tell them where it was,” Green said. “The wind changed. It was going right and then started blowing out, but then it went back to right. Between that and the sun, it was kind of tough,”

Montgomery only had to make two catches. The first was a line drive right to him and the second was fairly routine.

“One ball came right to my glove and the other I read right off the bat so there wasn’t that much to it,” said Montgomery, a St. Louis Cardinals fan.

Montgomery, who attended a World Series game last year when the Cardinals won it all, also has a favorite player – for an unusual reason.

“I found out David Eckstein’s never owned a new car, so I’ve looked up to him for that,” he said.

Judging from a crowd of children flocking around Montgomery for autographs after the game, he now has some people looking up to him as well.