CONVERSE — After trailing Norwell 4-0 for a majority of the game, Delta baseball finally showed signs of life in the fifth inning.
With two outs and a runner on first, sophomore outfielder Cale Taylor drove a ball deep into center field, allowing senior pinch runner Ayden Mitchell to use his speed and make it home for the Eagles’ first run of the IHSAA Class 3A regional championship game at Oak Hill . On the next at-bat, junior Kye Berger grounded one through the infield, which allowed Taylor to score another run before Berger was tagged out at second base.
After seeing their lead cut in half, the Knights loaded the bases in the top of the sixth, but Delta senior pitcher Maddox Huffman got the Eagles out of the jam, firing up his dugout in the process. With all the momentum on their side, Delta loaded up the bases in the bottom of the sixth with one out, giving them a good chance to complete the rally by tying the game or taking the lead.
But the Eagles couldn’t get it done. Delta failed to score in the sixth inning and only got one runner aboard in the bottom of the seventh, falling short of a regional three-peat with a 4-2 loss to Norwell.
“You just need a big hit,” Delta coach Jacob Van Pelt said. “You’ve got to have a big hit, and if you don’t have the big hits, you’re going to be looking and saying the ‘What if?’ game, and you’re going to be coming out on the losing end. They had a couple of big knocks in big spots, that kind of put some pressure on us, and we didn’t really put pressure on them until it was too late.”
Taylor hit another double in the bottom of the seventh to bring the tying run to the plate, but a great snag by Norwell senior Cayden Cassel and a strikeout by Delta sophomore Eli Overholt ended the Eagles’ last chance.
When Overholt struck out, the first person there to console him was senior shortstop Everrett Linn. Despite his own Delta career having just ended and feeling all of the emotions that come with that, Linn’s first instinct was to go to his young teammate and lift his head up in a crushing moment.
“There’s a certain point where you’ve got to take a mature approach to it,” Linn said. “There’s freedom to putting as much effort into it as you can and not getting the right result, and I feel free, not too distraught yet. Delta baseball first, and for the next years, I want to show what it is to be a Delta baseball player.”
If you ask his head coach, Linn has done exactly that for his entire career, becoming a shining example of the value in hard work, integrity and determination. After the Eagles broke the final huddle, Van Pelt pulled Linn aside to tell him one more time how much he means to the program as a whole and to Van Pelt personally.
“I just told him that, through my five years or whatever it’s been of coaching, he’s probably been my favorite player to coach,” Van Pelt said. “What I want for people in this program, I want to copy and paste Everrett Linn 50 times. I want Everrett Linns everywhere, just the way he is, the type of teammate he is, the type of kid he is, great parents who raised him well.
“He’s such a great ball player, and then an even better kid and leader. You can just tell he cares about every single one of these guys.”
Linn epitomized another value of Delta baseball in his final career games — toughness. During the Eagles’ sectional championship victory over Connersville, Linn attempted to field a ground ball that jumped right over his glove and popped him squarely on the nose.
The game was paused for about 15 minutes to clean up the blood that immediately began gushing from Linn’s nose. He finished the game, of course, and a postgame trip to the hospital confirmed that his nose was broken in three places.
The doctor suggested a full week off, but with a regional championship just five days away, Linn knew that was never in the realm of possibility for him.
“The doctor said, ‘You should probably take seven days off,'” Linn said. “I said, ‘That’s probably not an option, sir.’ If it had broken an orbital bone, if I had any symptoms of a concussion, I would have been out. I really did get lucky.”
Using “lucky” in the context of a baseball to the nose is probably a rare occurrence in the sport, but Linn truly meant it. He wasn’t just lucky to avoid a more serious injury — he was lucky to get one last chance to play with his Delta teammates that have become his closest friends.
“It’s crazy, after all the successes that the team’s had, it all comes down to relationships,” Linn said. “The relationships are the stuff that we’re going to remember forever. Just pleased to have the opportunity to play with the guys this year and the past guys.”
Contact Cade Hampton via email at cbhampton@usatodayco.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @CadeHamp10.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: How Everrett Linn epitomized toughness in his final Delta baseball game
Reporting by Cade Hampton, Muncie Star Press / Muncie Star Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Cade Hampton, Muncie Star Press | USA TODAY Network
