Four players from Gilroy are part of Morgan Hill team that won
West Zone tournament
San Jose – The players on the Morgan Hill Colt Division All-Star team have more to celebrate than winning the West Zone Tournament for the first time: They are on their way to the Pony Baseball World Series.
The Athletics of Morgan Hill defeated Bakersfield South West 14-7 Sunday to earn a trip to Lafayette, Ind. for the World Series.
“I’ve been doing this six years and this is the first time we were in the winner’s bracket,” said manager David Newton. “The kids played their hearts out.”
Right fielder Kevin Grove of Gilroy said the key to the win was the offense, which out-hit Bakersfield 18-9. In its half of the seventh, Morgan Hill, which had relied on small ball for most of the game, connected twice with the long ball. Morgan Hill’s Jon Hughes (Valley Christian) and Ryan Evanger (Gilroy High) went back-to-back with solo home runs to give Morgan Hill the final margin of victory.
“I’m happy as hell right now,” Grove said. “We hit a lot better today and our defense was solid.”
Hughes, who closed out the game for Morgan Hill pitching 2 1/3 innings and striking out five, said while he is excited to be moving on, the team needs to step up its play if it is going to compete with teams from around the world.
“I am pretty stoked,” Hughes said. “We should do pretty good. The United States teams are going to have to play well.”
Morgan Hill will begin play Thursday when it takes on Slovakia to open pool play. The South County team will play at least four games over five days.
Morgan Hill could advance to the semifinals scheduled for Aug. 7 if it takes first or second in its pool-play division of five teams. The winners of the semifinals advance to the gold medal round Aug. 8.
Included in Morgan Hill’s division are Mexico, the Lafayette All-Stars, Slovakia and the winner of the North Zone.
Morgan Hill forced Bakersfield to play catch-up the entire game, jumping to a 2-0 lead in the first inning, which the Southern California boys matched one inning later.
It was the closest Bakersfield got during the game.
In the top of the third inning, Morgan Hill strung together three straight doubles to open up a two-out, five-run rally to take a 7-2 lead.
Starting pitcher Matt Cummins (Live Oak) responded to the offensive flurry by throwing two perfect innings.
“I wanted to keep the team in it,” Cummins said. “I knew if I could keep them to four or five runs, we would be good. We are a good hitting team.”
In turn, Morgan Hill responded to the strong pitching by extending the lead to 11-2 with a four-run fifth inning.
After Christian Lam (Valley Christian) was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning, Morgan Hill produced three consecutive singles to drive in two runs. Cummins helped his cause by hitting a sacrifice fly to left field to drive in Danny Nelson (Sobrato).
Hughes capped off the scoring when he doubled to drive in Billy Hill (Sobrato).
Despite the offensive barrage and the large lead, Cummins would not last through the fifth inning.
After recording two quick outs, Cummins was tagged for three runs before being pulled with two runners on base. Those two later scored before Hughes, who replaced Cummins, struck out the final batter to get out of the inning.
Lam said the team has been known to allow opponents to stick around, but added that it knows how to keep games from getting out of hand.
“We answered right back after they scored a few runs,” Lam said. “It let them know that we were taking the game seriously and that we were still in it.”
Hughes went the final two innings without allowing a run, though Bakersfield threatened. In the bottom of the sixth with two outs, Hughes walked a batter to load the bases.
Hughes responded by striking out the next batter, to keep the 12-7 lead intact.
Hughes and Evanger then put and exclamation point on the top half of the seventh inning with their back-to-back homers.
In the bottom of the seventh, Hughes recorded two quick outs before walking a batter. Hughes then struck out the next batter with a 2-2 slider to send the team into jubilation and to the World Series.
“I wanted the strike out,” Hughes said. “I knew we had (the game) the whole time.”
Charlie McClung (Monte Vista Christian) initially dropped the third strike, but after throwing the ball to first, the entire team jumped onto Hughes in celebration.
Morgan Hill fans who can’t make the trip to Indiana can follow all of the team’s games via webcast which can be accessed at www.coltworldseries.com. The Web site also provides results from games and a breakdown of the entire World Series schedule.
