HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL : Mira Mesa Steps Toward Title

Mira Mesa can order the championship banner. These 3-A San Diego Section baseball playoffs are over.

The top-seeded Marauders (26-4-1) beat Mt. Carmel on Thursday, 3-1, in a quarterfinal game, but Saturday’s semifinals and next Thursday’s championship might be mere formalities.

Every year since 1981, the team that eliminated Mt. Carmel from the playoffs has gone on to win the county championship.

Mira Mesa beat Mt. Carmel in 1985 and the Marauders won their first title. Did the same thing last year to win its second title, and if history means anything--and it should by now--Mira Mesa will win the first back-to-back championships since Mt. Carmel did it in 1981-82.

“We try to approach everyone the same,” Mira Mesa Coach Mike Prosser said, “(But) they’ve got a little more bounce to them when they play Mt. Carmel.”

Mike Bovee pitched a two-hitter to beat Mt. Carmel (16-11-1) this time. The two teams had tied in the Upper Deck Classic this year, but an RBI single by Frankie Edsall and an RBI double by Bovee broke a 1-1 tie in the fifth inning. By then, Bovee (10-2) found the form that eluded him in the early innings.

Bovee struck out nine, but seven came in the final three innings. His biggest inning was the top of the fifth. Holding a 1-0 lead, he walked Matt Miller and surrendered Andy Owen’s RBI double, but struck out the next three batters. He retired the final nine in a row and struck out the side in the seventh, all on curves.

“Good pitchers respond in those situations and he responded today,” said Steve Edwards, first-year Mt. Carmel coach.

Mira Mesa got four of its seven hits in the fifth inning, including three in a row. A double by Brendan Hause, his second hit, caused a 13-minute delay over a ground-rules interpretation, and put runners at second and third. Then came Edsall’s and Bovee’s hits off Mt. Carmel starter Todd Voigt (3-4).

Mira Mesa will play Granite Hills at 11 a.m. in Saturday’s semifinal at Southwestern College.