Firefighters dampen A’s

A pitchers’ duel at Chaparosa Park in Laguna Niguel went to Raphael Vickers and the Laguna Beach Firefighters, who rallied to turn away the Laguna Hills Athletics, 5-4, in Little League action.

The Firefighters trailed, 4-1, going into the seventh inning, but used a walk to Sean Pidgen, a triple by Travis Sampson and consecutive singles by Casey Miller, Vickers and Ben Hanson to score four runs and take the lead.

Vickers threw 108 pitches, with a strike-to-ball ratio of 69-39, to off-set the performance of Lane Moreno of the A’s, who had tamed the Firefighters before running into trouble in the seventh.

Vickers finished with 15 strikeouts and gave up three hits in six complete innings. Ryan Raffo pitched the final inning for the Firefighters. He gave up a walk and the base runner advanced to second, but Jackson Christy came up with an unassisted double play. He snagged a liner and forced the runner out at second.

Jake Glazer fielded a grounder and threw to first for the final out of the contest.

The game was scoreless until the bottom of the fourth inning, where the A’s came up with a two-out rally to score three runs on just one hit. The rally was aided by a walk and two infield errors by the Firefighters.

The Firefighters wasted scoring opportunities in both the second and fifth 5th innings, but were unable to push across their initial run in the top of the sixth.

Ryan Raffo reached base on a dropped third strike and throwing error, advanced to second base after a grounder to the mound by Sawyer Pierce was mishandled, and moved to third on an infield ground out by Jackson Christy. He tagged up and scored on a sacrifice fly by Jack Clark to make it 3-1.

The A’s got that run back in the bottom of the sixth and threatened for more, but Christy made an outstanding, over-the-shoulder catch and Miller ended the inning by throwing out a base runner attempting to steal second.