What a difference an inning makes.

In the first inning of their 16-9 victory over Art Ray for the Parks and Recreation Department softball league championship, Winning Edge exploded for seven runs. Cat Turner, Kenny Davis , Chris Alexander, Mike Spruill, Andre Finner, Dennis Hobbs and Troop Sherrod all crossed the plate for the Edges. When they extended the lead to 13-0 over the next two innings, it appeared that the game might end early (the league slaughter rule states that a game ends if a team is ahead by 12 or more runs after five innings.

But in the bottom of the fourth, Art Ray, who finished first in the regular season with a record of 17-1 (Edge also finished 17-1, but Art Ray got the tiebreaker because it scored a bigger margin of victory over Edge), finally started hitting the ball. Rudy Copeland and Ryan Smith led off with singles, and Chris Ricks blasted a double to centerfield to score Copeland. Smith and Ricks scored on a single by Jerry Wilson, and Art Ray was on the board.

Billy Parker doubled Wilson to third, and Norman Wilkins walked to load the bases. David Spence smashed a line drive single to centerfield, and Wilson and Parker came in. Joe Pitt scored Wilkins with a sacrifice fly, and Rob Brinkley knocked in Spence with a single. Suddenly, Art Ray was within six, and had all the momentum.

Neither team scored in the fifth, but Pitt blasted a double into centerfield to score Wilkins and Spence in the sixth.

Spruill, however, brought control back to Edge in the seventh, blasting his second homer of the game (and fifth of the season) over the centerfield fence. Finner and Hobbs scored to extend the lead to 16-9, and Art Ray went down in order in the bottom of the inning. Edge had won by seven runs – the amount of its first inning surge.

&uot;The title is what we’ve been looking at all season,&uot; said Turner, who played on the Edge team that won the league title in 2000. &uot;We’re rivals, because they always have a really good team. Whoever started hitting first was going to win this game.&uot;