Cascade's Rea pitches well as Fort Wayne beats Kernels

CEDAR RAPIDS - For Fort Wayne pitcher and former Cascade prep Colin Rea, all roads led back home Friday night.

“It's undescribable,” said Rea (3-6), after giving up just three hits and one earned run in six innings as the TinCaps capped a three-game sweep of the Cedar Rapids Kernels with a 6-3 win before 5,041 fans at Veterans Memorial Stadium.

“I'm just glad that they came out to support (us),” Rea said about a large contingent of people from Cascade. “We had a great crowd.”

A tall, lanky right-hander, Rea was selected in the 12th round of the 2011 draft by the San Diego Padres. His road to pro ball was, however, anything but ordinary.

After earning all-conference, all-district, and all-state honors at Cascade in 2008, Rea elected to play close to home at Northern Iowa. After the 2009 season opener, Rea and his Panther teammates were dealt a blow.

Northern Iowa was dropping baseball.

“It was kind of heartbreaking,” said Rea, 22.“You know I thought we had a good team, a lot of young players. We had nine or 10 freshman on the team, so I think the next year, the next couple of years, we would have been pretty good.”

Before eventually reuniting with former Northern Iowa head coach Rick Heller at Indiana State, Rea spent the 2010 season at St. Petersburg (Fla.) Community College, where he was a teammate of last night's opposing starter, Cedar Rapids right-hander Austin Wood.

“He's a really good guy, he's a really good pitcher, a great competitor,” said Rea, who lowered his earned run average to 3.58.

“I was talking to him (Wednesday), and we just thought it was so crazy how we were both going to be pitching.”

The pitching matchup was nearly over before it began when Wood (5-9) was hit in the nose with the return throw of his final bullpen warm-up toss. Wood gave up three runs in seven innings as Cedar Rapids (8-19, 40-57) lost its sixth game in a row.

The Kernels' Alex Yarbrough extended his hitting streak to 15 games with a fifth-inning single.

Cedar Rapids hosts Lake County Saturday at 5 p.m. in the first game of a three-game series.