Charleston powers past Hagerstown with late rally in 7-6 thriller

Charleston turned the first inning into a barrage and still had to sweat out every pitch after that. Sharon Dunston Jr. led off the game by homering on the first pitch, Narciso Crook followed with another solo shot and Yassel Pino added a third blast in the same frame, giving the Dirty Birds a 3-0 jump before Hagerstown could settle in.

That opening surge did not finish the job on its own. Hagerstown answered with two runs in the first and tied it 3-3 in the third, then kept the pressure on against Charleston’s pitching. Eddy Demurias, though, changed the shape of the night after the chaos of the first inning, striking out seven straight batters at one point and finishing with 11 strikeouts and two walks while allowing four runs on eight hits.

The Flying Boxcars kept chipping away anyway. They pushed across a run in the fourth to move ahead and later grabbed a 6-4 lead in the sixth when Jared Carr ripped a bases-clearing double. Charleston’s offense had to find another gear after spending much of the middle innings chasing the game, and the Dirty Birds did exactly that when the ninth arrived.

With the game on the line, Charleston strung together the decisive rally. A walk opened the inning, Dunston Jr. then launched his second home run of the night to tie the score, Carlos De La Cruz singled, and Pino followed with a double that drove in the winning run. The extra hit also completed the cycle for Pino, capping a night in which Charleston answered Hagerstown’s biggest pushes with just enough damage of its own to escape with a 7-6 win.

The result left the teams tied 1-1 in the series, but the next two games showed how volatile the matchup could be. Hagerstown beat Charleston 15-6 on June 19, scoring multiple runs in six of its eight offensive innings, even after Charleston opened that game with a three-run homer from Pino. Two nights later, Hagerstown erased a 10-1 deficit and won 13-12, a comeback that moved the Boxcars two games atop the Northern Division and featured DJ Johnson and Keyvius Sampson as the starting pitchers.

The Atlantic League’s 2026 regular season is a 126-game grind before the division championship series and league championship series, and games like this keep the race from feeling routine. Charleston’s 317,682 fans at GoMart Ballpark in 2024 helped make the Dirty Birds one of the league’s biggest draws, and a night like June 17 showed why a team that starts this fast can still make every finish feel like a full-scale test.