CLINTON — An innocent ground ball turned into Warren Central’s worst nightmare.

The chopper off the bat of Patrick Barnes turned into a pair of errors, cleared the bases and allowed Barnes to circle them, and gave Clinton the runs it needed to beat Warren Central 9-8 in a key division game on Friday night.

The victory moved Clinton (11-3, 3-0 Division 4-6A) two games ahead of both WC (7-8, 2-2) and Vicksburg in the division. Clinton, which beat Warren Central twice this week, has one game left against the Vikings and plays two against Vicksburg next week.

“There’s still a lot of games to play. We’re still in the hunt. That’s all that matters,” WC coach Josh Abraham said.

Being involved in the key play was a measure of redemption for Barnes, Clinton‘s starting pitcher. The Meridian Community College signee hit four batters in a row before giving up a grand slam to Carlos Gonzalez in the top of the fourth inning. His sudden struggles, which he attributed to a sore elbow, allowed the Vikings to erase a 5-1 deficit and take a 6-5 lead.

“Baseball is baseball. It’s a game of failure,” said Barnes, who also doubled in the first inning. “That’s what makes you good, is if you get past that.”

In the bottom of the fourth, WC seemed poised to escape a bases-loaded jam until Barnes hit his two-out chopper just to the left of the mound. WC shortstop Beau Wallace made a nice play to get to the ball but had to make a long throw across his body. The ball sailed wide of first baseman Will Stegall and settled along a fence near the dugout.

Stegall recovered the ball and tried to throw home as Clinton’s Akiko Thompson sprinted down the third base line. Catcher Hunter Austin never saw the throw coming, though, and the ball ended up in the third base dugout. Two runners scored on the initial error and two more — including Barnes — came in on the second.

“It’s a hurried play. (Wallace) made a heck of a play to glove it, and we just couldn’t handle it,” Abraham said. “We didn’t know where the ball was going. It’s a tough play for anybody to make, and we didn’t do what we had to do to make that play.”

Clayton Ashley doubled in a pair of runs for WC in the bottom of the sixth to cut it to 9-8, but was stranded at second base. The Vikings also got two runners on with two outs in the seventh before Grady Turman got Bill McRight to chase a slow curveball for the final out.

Turman and Blake Gober both homered for Clinton, while Wallace led off the game with one for WC and scored three runs.