He wasn’t at his customary spot in the dugout, but there was no question that the Redan baseball team had coach Marvin Pruitt on their mind as they celebrated winning the Class AAAA championship.
The veteran coach had to step back from the day-to-day operation of the club since health problems early in the year. But when the players received the championship trophy, it went straight to Pruitt, who smiled as the crowd chanted his name.
“This is something I’ve been dreaming about for a long time,” said Pruitt, DeKalb County’s first 400-game winning coach.
Redan (30-7) knocked off nemesis Marist (27-9), winning the first game 11-0 and taking the second 4-3 at Marist’s Jerry Queen Field. It was the first title for a DeKalb County public school since Dunwoody in 2007. It was the third time Redan had reached the final.
“This means a lot,” said Redan shortstop Wesley Jones, a Georgia signee. “To have the experience to get one … it’s hard to describe.”
The two Region 6-AAAA rivals played four times before the championship series. Marist won the regular-season meeting, then defeated Redan two of three times in the region championship series.
The first game belonged to Redan’s Corderius Dorsey, who was the pitching and hitting star. The junior left-hander allowed two hits and struck out two in a seven-inning complete game. Dorsey also was 2-for-4 with three RBIs.
Dorsey had two big innings. In the first he shut down a Marist rally when the War Eagles had runners on the corners. He came up big again in the third inning when the first two Marist batters reached base, as he retired the next batters in order. He retired 15 of the final 16 batters he faced, with Nick Carrier’s double the lone exception.
Redan jumped ahead 4-1 in the second game and hung on to win. The Raiders scored three times in the first, with starting and winning pitcher Brandon Baker driving in the first run and the others scoring on a bases-loaded fielding error. Redan added another run on an opposite-field double by Jones.
Marist had the tying runner at second base on in the seventh against reliever Darian Osby, but could not get him around.
