Little League baseball: Marlins make some history

Barry Faulkner

HUNTINGTON BEACH - They didn’t flinch when they lost their 2-0

lead. Nor when frequent discussions and substitution rule interpretations

brought the game to a grinding halt on more than one occasion and the

specter of a protest from the opposing team loomed as real as the

impending sunset.

Even the fact that they were no-hit through 4 2/3 innings, managed

just one hit through seven frames, or watching as their opponents

celebrated the apparent game-winning run in the bottom of the sixth,

didn’t seem to threaten the focus of the Costa Mesa National Little

League Marlins Monday night.

“They just never game up,” Marlins Manager Paul Errington said of his

team of 11- and 12-year-olds, which outlasted the Fountain Valley Devil

Rays, 4-2, in eight innings in the Area 2 final of the District 62

Tournament of Champions at Wardlow Park.

The win, keyed by a dugout full of gamers intent on making more

history, propelled the Costa Mesa National contingent (23-6) into

Wednesday’s 5 p.m. Tournament of Champions title game against the

Fountain Valley Marlins, who won the Area 1 bracket at Costa Mesa High.

Wednesday’s game will be at Wardlow Park.

The dramatic triumph also made the Costa Mesans the first team in

league history -- at any level -- to win three Tournament of Champions

contests.

“Our kids definitely came through,” said a spent Errington, who

between accepting postgame congratulatory handshakes from parents and

rooters, took deep breaths and cradled his head in both hands, as if

massaging a migraine headache.

“We had two great catches in the outfield, Vinnie (Valdez) was on with

his pitching and P.J. (Errington) came in and finished it off (on the

mound).

“I think our kids have some sense of it,” Errington said of the

unprecedented postseason procession for a CMNLL squad. “We never got out

of focus and we just kept playing. Everyone knew where they were supposed

to be and they were there.”

Valdez was certainly there for his teammates, working out of

consistent jams by posting 12 strikeouts in six innings, then coming up

with the key hit in the winning rally.

Valdez, who homered Saturday, looped an RBI single over shortstop to

score Adam Seagondollar and break the 2-2 deadlock.

Seagondollar reached on a leadoff error, advanced to second on a

groundout and went to third on a swinging bunt single by Brice Stillman.

After Valdez drove in the go-ahead run, Stillman came home with an

insurance tally on P.J. Errington’s RBI groundout.

Errington, grinning with anticipation, pitched a perfect eighth to

spark a wild celebration that reflected the tension that lingered for

most of the 140-minute contest.

But it never would have come to that without some game-saving glove

work by Garrick Williams and Kevin Matson.

Williams, playing center field, roamed near the fence in left-center

and reached high to back hand Les Obie’s soaring one-out double back into

the field of play in the fourth.

Matson’s heroics came in the sixth, after a one-out double by Fountain

Valley’s Kevin Smisko. Valdez struck out the next hitter, but Gordon

Edwards belted a two-out rocket to right field. Matson, however, stood

his ground and stabbed the ball out of the air to save a run and send the

game into extra innings.

Second baseman Anthony Secrest and shortstop Stillman also were solid

defensively for the winners, who cashed in some good fortune to forge a

2-0 lead in the second.

Matt Pisarski and Secrest walked with one out and when a pitch in the

dirt got away and the catcher couldn’t find it, Pisarski motored home all

the way from second. One out later, Secrest scored from third on a wild

pitch and the Marlins pushed their Tournament of Champions scoring margin

to 31-1. Mesa trounced its first two opponents, 18-0 and 11-1 in games

limited to four innings by the 10-run mercy rule.

Fountain Valley, which totaled nine hits, got an earned run in the

second and an unearned run in the fourth to tie it. The Devil Rays

stranded 11 through the first six innings, before P.J. Errington shut

them down in his two-inning relief stint.

The Devil Rays thought they had won it with a run in the sixth, but

the ball was ruled dead before an apparent overthrow allowed the would-be

run to score.