The PAL All-Star team’s 25-game winning streak ends, but the Hollister team moves within four wins of a World Series berth
While looking for another baseball-playing avenue for a group of San Benito High baseball players this summer, Robert Fabing made one thing clear: He – under no circumstances – was going to split up his team of 13 players.
Fabing wanted the Hollister team, which represents San Jose PAL during Pony Colt Division playoffs, to grow and experience the tournament together. And after going 25 games without a loss, his team finally experienced what it was like to lose together Saturday.
Afterward, the team responded just like he wanted it to.
After falling to last year’s Colt Division World Series Champions Los Gatos Legends 5-1 Saturday, Fabing’s San Jose PAL All-Star team, consisting of only Hollister players, stayed alive Sunday in the West Zone NorCal-Central Region tournament.
The All-Star team erupted on offense, scoring 14 runs in a 14-8 victory over the Los Gatos Legends White team at PAL Stadium in San Jose on Sunday.
It didn’t take the All-Star team long to find an offensive rhythm, striking for three first-inning runs. After a quick out, San Jose followed with four-straight hits from Cody Freitas, Dylan Yamasaki, Daniel Gonzales and Jordan Lopes to get on the board.
“We were able to score off their pitching,” Fabing said. “Their pitching was right there for us. We weren’t fooled at all.”
Los Gatos, though, wouldn’t go quietly striking back for two runs in the bottom of the second inning. But again, San Jose responded to regain its three-run cushion in the top of the third inning.
Greg Steinbeck and Caleb Menez added two runs on a pair of soft line drives to the outfield. Overall, San Jose recorded 14 hits and had a runner on base in every inning.
“We mashed the ball pretty well today,” Fabing said. “So we live ’til tomorrow and that’s the main thing.”
It almost didn’t happen, though. In the third and fourth innings, Los Gatos outscored the PAL All-Star team 6-3 to take an 8-6 lead entering the game’s final three innings.
Behind the arm of Lopes and collective hitting, San Jose started to string together runs, outscoring Los Gatos 8-0 in the fifth and six innings to retake the lead for good.
Jacob Trujillo started for San Jose and completed three inning, allowing four runs. Trujillo started well, throwing a quick three-batter first inning, but struggled with control. A pair of defensive errors added to his struggles.
Lopes entered in the fourth inning and immediately found trouble for Hollister, walking the bases loaded with no outs. Los Gatos scored four runs in the inning, but afterward the hard-throwing Lopes was unhittable.
On offense, Yamasaki led the way going 4-for-5 with two doubles and four RBIs. All four RBIs came in his final three at-bats, after San Jose fell behind.
“We came out and we just hit well … I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve all been playing together for a while. We know how to play as a team.”
And that’s exactly what Fabing wanted to see from his team, he said.
“I was worried about this morning how we were going to respond to that,” Fabing said. “We pretty much mashed the ball. The kids were ready to play and hopefully tomorrow we’ll be ready to do what we need to do. We are all from the same school and there is a lot of team unity and we hall have our backs. They pick each other up. We have fun.”
To earn a berth in the Colt Division World Series in Indiana, San Jose must win twice Monday, beating Columbia Basin Washington and Valley Wide, and then beat Los Gatos Legends twice Tuesday.
