Mustangs stampede way to 7-1 victory over Homestead in season
opener
Gilroy – This past weekend came and went without a hint of the winter wonderland that had promised to blanket the South Valley Region. And on Tuesday afternoon the California sunshine was beating brightly, with hardly a cloud in the sky as the Gilroy Mustangs baseball team opened its 2006 season against Homestead.
In fact, the only storm clouds seen on this day were in the form of Mustang bats as they stampeded their way to an easy 7-1 victory in the two squads season opener.
But for awhile it looked as if even Gilroy’s offensive blizzard would be a false alarm. While Gilroy never trailed in the game the first four innings were indicative of Opening Day.
The game’s first six runs were all unearned and the first three players to cross the dish for either team did so by virtue of a wild pitch. A quick glance at the linescore revealed both pitchers throwing no hitters through three innings and yet Gilroy led 2-0 in the contest. The game would end with a total eight errors and seven wild pitches with six of those errors and five of the wild pitches being committed by Homestead.
“I’ll be honest with you. It didn’t feel like I was throwing a no-hitter out there. Not even close,” said Gilroy starting pitcher Tyler Osbourne as he laughed about his early innings. “I definitely had the jitters a bit. It was Opening Day and I was really pumped up and excited wanting to do well.”
Truth is, while Osbourne may have felt the jitters, his early game performance was rather impressive as he allowed only one ball out of the infield and struck out three of his first nine outs. But it was rendering the free pass that most haunted Osbourne afterwards.
“In all three innings I gave up a two out walk. It didn’t end up hurting me today but against the Bellarmine’s out there I can’t be making those kind of mistakes,” Osbourne admitted. “They’ll come back and hurt me. I have to cut back on those and be smart.”
Gilroy jumped out to the early lead thanks in large part to the wheels of the place-setters, Josh Sterling and Michael Stevens. In the first inning Sterling drew a leadoff walk, reached second on a throwing error by the pitcher during a failed pick-off attempt, was moved to third by a perfectly executed sacrifice bunt by Stevens and scored on a wild pitch.
The third inning went about the same. Sterling reached on the one out walk, reached second on a throwing error and got to the corner when Stevens reached on an error. But then Stevens and Sterling attempted a double steal that the pitcher cut off, which allowed him to gun Sterling down at the plate. Stevens, however, would give Gilroy the 2-0 lead when he advanced and scored thanks to two wild pitches.
“That’s my job. To get on base and make things happen,” Sterling admitted. “It’s to put pressure on the defense. There were a lot of pitches that were up so the key was to take some pitches and jump on (Homestead) early).”
Leading 2-1, Stevens, who scored three runs in the game, took over in relief of Osbourne and threw three innings of shutout baseball, striking out three, walking one and allowing just one hit.
“I know that when I’m out there on the mound I have a lot of confidence in the guys behind me. We have great team camaraderie. We’re all real close,” Stevens described. “This was our first game really seeing live pitching and it took us awhile to warm up.”
But when they did, the Mustangs really caught fire.
In the team’s final two at bats they had five runs on five hits to put the game out of reach. Osbourne got the win and Stevens, who entered the game with Gilroy clinging to the 2-1 lead, got the save.
“There’s a lot of positive that we can take away from this win,” head coach Clint Wheeler admitted. “We preach over and over again that when you see a ball in the dirt you want to take second. We were real aggressive on the base paths (Tuesday) and our defense was solid through and through.”
The defensive play of the game came in the top of the second inning when Sterling stretched out in center field and made a diving catch for the inning’s final out. The shot of the game came in the home half of the inning when Kevin Grove gave a 2-1 fastball a ride to the deepest part of the ballpark.
“It was a 2-1 count and I was sitting on the fastball,” Grove related. “I knew as soon as I hit it that it wasn’t gone. It’s a long way out there. I don’t think that anyone’s ever hit one out of straight center. If they did it was a great shot. I hit it well, just to the wrong part of the park.”
