King’s Fork’s baseball team wrapped up its season on Saturday morning with a make-up game against Grassfield. Against a short-handed Bulldog team, Grassfield’s Cody Cox got to within two outs of a perfect game before losing that and the shutout, but Cox’s performance was still good enough for a 5-1 Grassfield win.

King’s Fork had only seven varsity players available for the game as a number of Bulldogs had trips for this weekend already planned or other events such as football camps. Head coach J.B. Varney had to call up four JV players to have a squad to take on the Grizzlies, a team which the full-strength Bulldogs beat 6-2 earlier this week.

King’s Fork pitching combo of Travis Cherry and Joey Aranda did well to keep the Grizzlies within shouting distance, but the story was Cox.

Cox, a tall right-hander, hit 88 mph with his fastball a number of times on King’s Fork’s radar gun and was throwing strikes with his curve and change-up. Cox struck out 17 of the 18 KF hitters he faced through six innings and finished with 18 strikeouts.

Meanwhile, Grassfield put together two-run innings in the first and third against Cherry and scored one in the fourth against Aranda. From there, Aranda held Grassfield in check. Aranda finished 4.0 innings giving up three hits and striking out four.

The Bulldogs managed to break up Cox’s perfect game bid in the bottom of the seventh. With one out, Michael Murray sent a fly to deep left-center field for a double.

The next Bulldog up, Aranda, sent a drive to right-center field for a double, bringing Murray around to score.

The Bulldogs (5-15, 4-14) finish this season with the most wins, overall and in the Southeastern District, in the program’s five-year history. KF recorded its first-ever victory against Nansemond River and its first ever sweep over a district opponent, Oscar Smith.