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ATLANTA - The sun was warm, the sky was clear and the finely manicured grass of Turner Field was in perfect condition for baseball.

The only things missing were the smell of hot dogs, the tomahawking Chick-fil-A cow and the big-league Braves.

The fans who came to 755 Hank Aaron Drive were far from disappointed as Kell and Walton, playing in a game sponsored by the Braves to help stimulate baseball in the southern part of Atlanta, treated them to a game that would have been hard to surpass.

Kell won the key Region 6AAAAA game, 3-2, but few people are likely to remember the score. They, along with Kell's Zach Grillo and John Duran are more likely to remember the bottom of the seventh inning and the game's deciding play.

It started with Grillo, who had played an exceptional game in left field up to that point, making his first mistake of the game. He misplayed a ball off the bat of Walton's Evan Hendricks.

Grillo charged the ball as it curved away from him toward the third-base line in left field. In trying to cut the ball off, he only made matters worse.

"I was just trying to get to the ball to try and keep (Hendricks) from going to second," Grillo said.

But, as the ball ticked off the side of his glove and rolled into the corner, Grillo's thoughts changed from holding Hendricks to a double, to keeping him from scoring.

The play was made all the more difficult considering the size of the field. As one can imagine, Turner Field is slightly larger than Kell's field or Walton's diamond at Raider Mountain.

Veteran Kell coach Donnie English said setting his defense was relatively simple for the infield, but the outfield was something different.

"You don't know how deep to play the outfield," he said. "It's so big."

The bigger outfield also made relay throws more difficult - and, in this case, unexpected.

Grillo tracked the ball down in the left-field corner and hit his cut-off man, shortstop Duran, now tracking well into left field, with a chest-high strike. Duran said he figured Hendricks would be held at third until he heard someone yelling something that surprised him.

"I had no idea he was going until I heard someone yell at me, 'Throw him out!'" Duran said.

Maybe getting caught in the moment, despite the fact the Raiders would have had a man on third and no outs, Walton coach Shane Amos, with his arms flailing, decided to roll the dice and send Hendricks to the plate with the potential tying run.

"I got a little greedy," Amos reflected after the game. "But I knew they had to make two perfect throws to get him. I should have held him at third."

Just as his Braves counterpart, Yunel Escobar, may have done with a relay from Garret Anderson, Duran's extra-long throw to Reid Turner at the plate was just that - perfect. Turner was able to apply the tag to a diving Hendricks inches before his fingers touched the plate.

The perfect relay throws were a major-league play on a day where both teams would have made the Braves proud to have them on their field.

But it was far from the only big-league moment.

Walton's Spencer Kieboom and Patrick Cosgrove found out exactly how hard it is to hit a ball out of a major-league stadium. Kieboom hit a pair of balls that would have been out of any park in Cobb County, but came away with only a double and a long fly out. Cosgrove just missed hitting a home run to straight-away center field, having the ball land at the base of the fence, and settling for a 400-foot triple.

Duran may have had the best day of anyone at the dish. He had a pair of doubles, an infield single and scored two of the Longhorns runs. He gave some of the credit to the stadium itself, because hitters can see the ball so much better.

"The ball came out of that big black background," Duran said of the pitches coming in front of the ballpark's darkened videoboard.

But, even with the teams' offensive successes, defense carried the day.

In the second inning, Grillo made another stellar play in left, robbing Hendricks of an RBI when he charged his single and threw Michael Savransky out at the plate.

Hendricks got a modicum of revenge when he gunned down Grillo, who was trying to advance to third on a single in Kell's half of the sixth. Duran grabbed a hot shot up the middle and turned it into a 6-4-3 double play in Walton's half of the inning.

If the game had ended there, just getting a chance to play at Turner Field would have been a memorable day for everyone involved.

"It's huge to get a win at Turner Field," Duran said. "It's even bigger that it's a region game."

But after capping the game with the play at the plate, Grillo maybe put it better.

"It's something I'll remember forever."

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