Joe Graves comes out of the dugout celebrating along with players Thomas Escousse (5), John Parks and Dan Muirhead (20) after the last out Monday night.(The Vicksburg Post/C. TODD SHERMAN)

[05/07/02]Aaron George’s right arm and an opportunistic offense has St. Aloysius on the brink of a state championship.

The St. Al senior tossed six shutout innings, then left two runners on base in the final inning to give the Flashes a 7-4 win over archrival Natchez Cathedral for the Class 1A South State championship in front of an estimated 1,500 at Bazinsky Field.

The win vaulted the Flashes (23-4) into their first state championship series since the 1975-76 team won the Class BB championship over Caledonia.

St. Al will host Myrtle (24-8) in a best-of-three series on Thursday at 7 p.m.

“I know the way I was when I pitched in high school and college, if I had the lead, nobody was going to beat me,” said St. Al coach Joe Graves who had lost the last five South State championship series his teams have played in. “I didn’t care if it was the Yankees, I was going to whip their tail; that’s the way Aaron is.”

The Meridian Community College signee allowed two hits through six innings before Cathedral (18-12) mounted a seventh-inning rally.

Unlike the series opener, George took the hill carrying a 7-0 lead. On Thursday with St. Al clinging to a 2-1 lead, Cathedral scored four runs in the top of the seventh off of George (11-1). The Flashes won the game in the bottom of the seventh with four of their own.

“I wanted to get out of that inning,” said an exhausted George, who said he started getting dizzy in the fifth inning. “When they started hitting the ball, I started to think, here we go again.’ ”

Cathedral loaded the bases in the top of the seventh on a double, single and a walk. Jeremy Davis walked to score Daniel Wisner for the Green Wave’s first run.

A wild pitch, RBI groundout and an RBI double pulled Cathedral to 7-4 with two outs and runners on first and third.

George got Garrett Jones on a swinging third strike to end the game. Players and coaches mobbed each other in front of home plate as the celebration went on for nearly 45 minutes.

“It’s hard to put into words. It just feels great,” first baseman Jason Brown said. “This is the first time for us to go to a state championship. I’ve never been this far.”

Blake Warnock belted a first-inning, two-run home run to right field, Charlie Amborn had an RBI single and George had a triple off of Davis, a freshman.

“He pitched good enough to win the ballgame, we just didn’t back him up,” said Cathedral coach Kenny Beesley, who led the Green Wave to the 1995 state title. “The first three runs they got, they earned, but we gave them those last four.”

In the fifth inning, the Flashes scored three runs on one hit and took advantage of three errors to up their lead to 6-0.

Dan Muirhead led off with a single, advanced to second on a balk and scored on an Alex Frisbee sacrifice bunt attempt. Davis fielded the bunt, tried to nail Muirhead at third, but the ball skipped into left field, scoring Muirhead. Two more errors gave St. Al the 6-0 lead.

“That one inning there kind of got us in a hole,” Beesley said. ” … We didn’t have anyone to blame about being in that situation except ourselves.”

Muirhead led off the sixth by reaching on an error and scored on Amborn’s RBI single for a 7-0 Flashes’ lead.

“Sometimes we get to where we don’t hit when we need to,” said Warnock, who also kept a Cathedral run from scoring with a perfect throw from center field to home in the seventh inning. “Tonight, we took advantage.”

The Flashes, who will have a light practice today, will try to improve to 5-0 in home playoff games this season on Thursday. Game 2 will be in Myrtle on Saturday and a third game, if necessary, will be at Bazinsky on Monday at 7 p.m.

“If Myrtle is any better than Cathedral, then we’ll have our hands full,” Graves said. “Playing Cathedral is almost like playing a championship round. Cathedral is that good and I have all the respect in the world for them.”