After an entire season spent on the road, the Campolindo freshman
baseball team finally played at home for the first time in their tenth game. The boys faced a rematch double-header
against archrival Miramonte, playing on the home varsity field for the first
time.
The first game was a taut pitcher’s duel, with Campo winning
2-1. Campo’s ace went 6 2/3 innings, allowing
only three hits and one run. The few times Miramonte threatened, he managed to induce the critical outs to prevent the
merry-go-round and comedy of errors that we had seen so many times over the
years against the Miramonte players. For
his part, Michael drove in the first run with a walk, made a few routine defensive
plays, and was involved in a critical pickoff play to eliminate a runner he had
allowed through an error. Campo scored
its other run on a sacrifice fly, doing just enough to win the game.
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| Juuuust a bit inside ... |
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| ... to earn a walk and an RBI for the first run |
Unfortunately, Campo’s pitcher had run up against the mandatory pitch count limit. That put the ball in the hands of one of the other pitchers, who had closed out a win against Miramonte earlier in the season. He got two quick strikes, but then ran the count to 3-2. With the tension in the park as high as it would ever be for a freshman baseball game, he induced a game-ending ground ball to first baseman to seal the win. Campo did not exhibit much offense, and ran themselves out of a couple of potential rallies, but played well enough behind an ace pitching performance to earn quality win
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| And there was joy in Mudville |
During the break between games, the Campolindo families
initiated a practice that will likely become a tradition. The parents laid out the spread of
sandwiches, chips, drinks and desserts for the players, coaches and families of
both teams. The Miramonte parents and
players were appreciative, and there was a palpable sense (in the natural
course of the way the rivalry between these neighboring towns and schools
works) that a gauntlet had been thrown, and a challenge had been accepted.
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| Rivals breaking bread together |
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| It takes a lot to feed two baseball teams |
Campolindo sent out a new lineup for the second game, so
Michael sat out most of the contest. The
game started as shaky as the first game had been solid: Miramonte’s first
batter reached on an error, and the runner stole
second and third. Fortunately, he did
not score. Both teams put runners on
base in the first couple of innings through hits and errors, and Campo scored
first, pushing across three runs in the bottom of the second. Miramonte responded with five runs top of the
third, including a two-run home run and a steal of home on the front side of a
double-steal in typical Miramonte fashion.
Each team put up a single run over the next half innings, until Campo
tied the score at six in the bottom of the fifth inning. With the contest level, two innings remained to
determine a winner, a setup Campolindo partisans would always be happy to accept.
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| Working the sidelines |
The top of the sixth did not start in an auspicious manner
for Campolindo, but it felt familiar.
The first Miramonte batter reached a dropped third strike, and the
second batter was hit by a pitch. In a
series of events that seemed to confirm that the days of the Moraga boys always
losing to the Orinda boys as a matter of holy writ were over, the Miramonte
lead runner was thrown out trying to steal third. Two pitches later, the second runner, who had
stolen second, was picked off second, with Michael – having just entered the
game at shortstop – working the second base pickoff with his pitcher to
perfection. The batter during all this
drama then struck out. Thus ended a
typically crazy inning: only three batters came to the plate, two of them got
on base without a hit (one by strikeout), both were erased from the base paths,
and the ball was never once put in play.
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| Picking off a dangerous runner is always a good reason for smiles |
(All photos courtesy B. Maher)
In the bottom of the sixth inning, with two outs the Campolindo
batters string together consecutive singles.
Unfortunately, a runner was thrown out at home for the third out – the
third Campolindo player thrown out at home in the game. In the top of the seventh, the fates got back
on script. A single, a stolen base, a
wild pitch, and a ground out gave Miramonte to the go-ahead run, and an error later
in the inning gave them an insurance run, even as Campo’s catcher threw out
another runner attempting to steal. Down
to their last chance in the bottom of the seventh, Campo got a runner on base
with a single but could not bring him around to score. Michael popped out in his only at-bat and the
game ended on a called third strike, with Campo going down 8-6.
The game was lively but a bit sloppy (the teams combined for 24 hits
and four errors), but the Campolindo boys were never out of it the way they
used to be against their Orinda foes over years of youth baseball. They finished an even 2-2 for the season
series and served notice that they would not roll over in habitual defeat
anymore. As they continue to play, they
will clean up the mistakes that usually sealed their fate. We look forward to several more years of this
spirited rivalry, particularly as Miramonte’s program has, for the moment,
surpassed the Campolindo program (Miramonte’s varsity team almost went
undefeated this season, beating Campolindo in the Northern Coast Section
semifinals, only to suffer their sole loss in the NCS championship game).
