Left in a do-or-die situation

FULLERTON — The first two innings made some think this baseball game would be a walk in the park for the Costa Mesa All-Stars.

Eight times batters walked before Tustin managed to record six outs.

By then, Costa Mesa led by six runs in its opening round game of the Pony 13 District Southern California Central Region Sectional Tournament.

But the game’s pace changed after the third inning Monday night.

No more free passes for Costa Mesa. Tustin caught up by throwing strikes and running wild after hits to come back and win, 11-8, at Amerige Park.

“You can’t win, you know, [when] you have four hits,” Costa Mesa Coach Cisco Rios said. “You’re not going to do too much damage.

“We had a chance to win and [we] just let them off the hook.”

Now Costa Mesa finds itself one loss away from going home in the 11-team tournament. Costa Mesa plays Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. against the winner of Fountain Valley and Cypress.

Rios never believed his team, comprised of 13-year-olds, would be in this predicament so early on.

Looking back at Monday’s game, Rios knew his team needed to take advantage of those four bases-loaded opportunities in the first inning. Or else defending sectional champion Tustin would battle back and earn the chance to play Whittier in the semifinals Thursday at 7 p.m.

Costa Mesa only scored two runs, one via a walk and the other on a wild pitch, in the first.

In the second, Costa Mesa began to hit the ball. Three singles, the hardest hit by Parker Shoafe. He brought in two runs with a shot to right-center field to put Costa Mesa ahead, 7-1.

Everything that could’ve gone wrong had for Tustin Coach Sean O’Donoghue. He already used two pitchers. The third, Noah Stillman, was on his way in.

The left-handed Stillman, whose uncle is Rob Stillman, coach of the Costa Mesa National Little League All-Stars, got himself out the jam with a double play.

From then on, Tustin controlled the game with Noah Stillman dealing for 3 1/3 innings and the offense stringing together hits in the fourth and fifth innings to take a 10-7 lead.

Only once after the second inning did Costa Mesa record a hit, a double by Tyler Jones that went for nothing in the sixth. With Stillman out, Jones finally got something to hit. He smashed a shot toward the gap in right-center field. The ball rolled to the fence, but center fielder Connor Hoffman quickly tracked the ball down.

Hoffman fired it to the cut-off man, who gunned down Jones trying to stretch a double into a triple.

“I had to make something happen,” Jones said.

Jones contributed to Costa Mesa’s early success.

The right-hander started on the mound and kept a hard-hitting lineup at bay, giving up five hits and three runs in the first three innings.

In the fourth is where Tustin began to hammer the ball. Hoffman legged out a triple, cutting the deficit to 7-5.

With Tyler Rios in relief and runners on the corners, Tustin made it a one-run game by sending a runner to second that forced a throw.

While Costa Mesa chased the third out between first and second, a run scored before the out was recorded.

O’Donoghue figured Tustin was on its way to storming back, the same way it did much of last year, when Tustin advanced to the Western Zone Tournament by claiming the District Sectional and Regional tournaments at Amerige Park.

“I wasn’t terribly worried,” he said.

DAVID CARRILLO PEÑALOZA may be reached at (714) 966-4612 or at david.carrillo@latimes.com.