Paul Carpenter Capital Advisors GM/assistant coach Tayler Sheriff was determined to recover the baseball that one of his players hit out of Point Stadium in a AAABA Tournament semifinal victory over the Cleveland Blaze.
Sheriff made his way down the river wall and walked bare-footed through the shallow water of the Stonycreek River until he found the baseball nestled among a pile of rocks in the low water.
A night earlier, Patrick Ferguson was called on as a pinch-hitter with two outs in the eighth inning with Paul Carpenter trailing Cleveland by a run. The left-handed hitting Ferguson got all of a pitch and sent it flying over the right field fence, bleachers and past the rotunda. The three-run homer provided the winning runs in a 7-6 game.
The ball hit a wall outside the stadium and landed in the riverbed.
Sheriff presented the water-logged baseball to Ferguson after Paul Carpenter finished as national runner-up to the Zanesville Junior Pioneers.
The link to The Tribune-Democrat story on the river walk follows: