SACCO: DeMoss, your table is ready

AMHERST
No goading. No Barbara Walters hand-on-the-knee question asking.
Heck, all you had to do was come out and ask Waynesboro freshman pitcher Drew DeMoss if he was nervous when skipper Jim Critzer, after watching senior starter Jeremy Hahn get into a sixth-inning funk, motioned toward the pen to bring the 15-year-old in.
To pitch.
A freshman.
With a two-run lead.
And a return trip to states on the line.
“Yeah,” the brace-faced X-Box fan said with a grin. “I have to admit, I was pretty nervous.”
Hahn, who was sent to the outfield after getting yanked, was nervous too. His heart was beating fast, he wanted to go back to states and he felt DeMoss’ pain.
“My heart was beating as a freshman for a regular varsity game,” the senior said, looking like was going to hug the next Little Giant that walked past him. “To come into regionals? I … don’t even know how to say it.”
Imagine being a freshman, the weight of a team’s season on your shoulders. Three pitches later, DeMoss was out of the inning. Five batters after that, he induced a slow dribbler back to the mound where he fingered the ball, picked it up and tossed it lazily to first baseman Jeremy Craig. Craig, another senior, pumped his fist. DeMoss was stone faced. Maybe not realizing what he had just done.
“What did I tell you,” Critzer said, still smiling after the Little Giants’ 10-8 Region III semifinal win. “He’s an ace.”
And he’s the future.
Mr. Drew DeMoss, your table is ready.
“What kind of pressure do you think he was under?” Critzer asked without waiting for an answer. “For a freshman, to do that.”
He never finished. He didn’t have to.  DeMoss took care of that.
His save, in the pressure cooker known as the regional tournament, sent the Little Giants to the Group AA tournament for the second straight year.
Yeah, he’s only 15, but he knows pressure. He’s asked three or four girls out. He’s been on two or three dates. But nothing like this, with Hahn standing in the outfield hoping DeMoss could finish the job.
“I had faith in him,” he said. “But my heart was beating fast.”
All Critzer did was hand him the ball and say, “Strike some guys out.”
What DeMoss did was better than having all the girls in the River City wanting to go Dutch at Pizza Hut — he pitched great in the biggest game of his life.
“And I’m going to throw him in the championship game,” Critzer said.
Well, the biggest game of his life this day, at least.