With an inspiration sitting in the dugout, Georgia halted Georgia Tech's advance on the state.
In the final scheduled meeting between the two teams this season, the Bulldogs squeezed past Georgia Tech 6-4 Tuesday night at Turner Field. It ended the Yellow Jackets' five-game winning streak against the Bulldogs and prevented a series sweep for the second year in a row.
The Bulldogs received an emotional lift when teammate Johnathan Taylor, paralyzed in an outfield collision March 6, showed up to the field prior to the game, hugging teammates from his wheelchair. The last time the Bulldogs were with him as a team, he was in intensive care at St. Mary's Hospital in Athens.
"It's just very emotional," coach David Perno said of the reunion. "The last time we saw him as a group, he was in tough shape, and he's just a whole different guy now. It was pretty special."
Taylor watched the first four innings of the game from the dugout, Perno said, before returning to the Shepherd Center, where he is rehabilitating. It was long enough to see the Bulldogs rough up Tech starter Matthew Grimes in the fourth with five runs.
"And then we said, ‘You're good to go now. We've got it from here,'" Perno said.
Georgia, battling against one of the toughest schedules in the country, is 22-20. Tech, ranked No. 9 in the latest Baseball America poll, is 30-12.
The Bulldogs scored four of the runs in the five-run fourth on two-run, two-out base hits by leadoff man Levi Hyams and No. 3 hitter Kyle Farmer. The job Georgia did at the plate Tuesday against Grimes – five earned runs in 3 2/3 innings and 66 pitches – was entirely different than the last time he pitched against the Bulldogs. Two weeks ago at Tech, Grimes struck out 10 in 6 2/3 innings in a 5-3 Jackets win. Perno said the plan was to take more pitches against Grimes.
"We just created, worked his pitch count up, put him in the stretch a little longer, and things are tough" when that happens, Perno said.
The five-spot erased a 2-0 Tech lead.
"I honestly thought [Grimes] threw the ball pretty good," Tech coach Danny Hall said. "But in the big inning, he threw too many balls up in the zone and too many in the middle of the plate, and they capitalized on them."
Farmer, who was retired twice in two-on, two-out situations in Georgia's April 12 loss to Tech, came through again in the top of the eighth with another run-scoring single with two outs for a 6-4 lead. In the previous half-inning, Jacob Esch came to the plate with a man on third and two out. He worked a 10-pitch at-bat against Earl Daniels, but flew out to left to end the inning. The Jackets did not threaten in the final two innings.
Tech's 3-4-5 hitters, Matt Skole, Jake Davies and Sam Dove, who came into the game with a collective .371 batting average and 83 combined RBIs, were a combined 1-for-11.
"The difference in the game was that we couldn't get any two-out hits and they seemed to get them when they needed them," Hall said.
Georgia's Bryan Benzor (2-0) earned the win with three innings of relief. Tyler Maloof, the last of six Bulldogs pitchers, earned the save, his SEC-leading 14th. Grimes fell to 5-3.
Perno said players had been anticipating a visit from Taylor, saying that he had even wanted to come to the April 12 game at Tech.
Taylor is "getting better every day," Perno said, "and he's very optimistic. You can see it in our guys: The better he gets, the happier we get."
