State Champion Hollister eliminated from Babe Ruth Pacific
Southwest Regional
Finishing third in a baseball tournament isn’t bad
– especially when that tournament happens to determine which
Pony League baseball team is the best in the world.
State Champion Hollister eliminated from Babe Ruth Pacific Southwest Regional
Finishing third in a baseball tournament isn’t bad – especially when that tournament happens to determine which Pony League baseball team is the best in the world.
On Tuesday, the Morgan Hill A’s dream season came to an end after they lost 10-6 to Tampa Bay, Florida in the semifinals of the Pony League World Series in Lafayette, Indiana.
The A’s went 3-2 in the tournament, which included teams from across the globe. Morgan Hill picked up wins over Slovakia, Lafayette and Mazatlan, Mexico before dropping back-to-back contests to Missouri and Tampa.
While Tampa went on to face Greensboro, North Carolina in the championship game the A’s reflected on being the only team from Morgan Hill to ever advance to the Series.
“I can’t complain. I’m really proud of the boys,” said A’s Coach Dave Newton from Indiana on Wednesday afternoon as he was packing up for the trip home. “We did really well.”
In fact, in the semifinals against the Tampa team, the A’s opened up a 3-0 lead before a handful of costly errors at the wrong time turned the tide.
“We had an easy double-play ball that was dropped, and then everything seemed to go to hell after that,” Newton said. “After that error, they scored five runs on us and we kind of went flat. We did the same thing again in the next inning. We made too many errors.”
Despite their defense woes, the A’s battled back.
By the bottom of the seventh inning, the score was 10-6 and the A’s were knocking at the door again.
With two outs, the A’s managed to load up the bases. A homerun would have tied the game. Newton brought in pitcher Alika Bantilian in to pinch-hit in the tense situation, knowing that he had the power to tie the game with one swing. Unfortunately, he struck out to end the game.
“I was still proud of him,” Newton said. “Everyone did well.”
The A’s went further than expected – and wouldn’t have made the semifinals at all had the tournament not followed Olympic scoring rules.
After losing to Missouri on Monday, the A’s advanced and Missouri was eliminated. The reason was that Missouri’s win put them in a three-way tie in the bracket for first place. From there, the team that scored with the most runs in the bracket advanced. Morgan Hill, thanks to its 18-0 shellacking of Slovakia in the tournament opener, was No.1 in the group in runs scored.
Hollister Babe Ruth
The Northern California State Champion Hollister Babe Ruth All-Star won’t be going to the Babe Ruth World Series this week in North Carolina. On Sunday night, the local squad of 14-year olds was eliminated from the Pacific Southwest Regional tournament in Sacramento by the Arizona state champion Yankees, which hail from Phoenix. Hollister lost by a 12-6 margin.
“The game was a lot closer than the score indicated,” said Hollister Coach Stephen Ferranti. “We had some chances. I was a little disappointed with the way we played the first game of the tournament. But the team played really well to go as far as they did.”
Hollister lost the first game of the double-elimination tournament by a 4-2 score to Santa Rosa.
“In that game, we had five errors and only three hits,” Ferranti said. “We made only four errors in eight district and state tournament games combined.”
In the second game of the tournament, Hollister bounced back with a 9-2 win over East Sacramento before succumbing to Phoenix. Phoenix wound up advancing all the way to the finals before losing to Southern California’s Citrus Valley in the championship game.
Although Phoenix was impressive, Hollister had some chances to beat them. Going into the bottom of the fifth inning, Hollister trailed 5-1 before scoring three runs to cut the score to 5-4. Hollister’s offensive onslaught wound up sending three Phoenix pitchers to the showers.
Later in that same inning, Hollister managed to load the bases up without a single out in the one-run contest but failed to generate another run.
In the top of the sixth, Phoenix scored three more runs to jump out to an 8-4 lead. Hollister answered the challenge by picking up two more runs of its own in the bottom half of the inning.
Phoenix then put the game out of reach by scoring four in the top half of the seventh to seal the victory.
