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Miscues doom Washington against Long Beach
jtuscano@observer-reporter.com
For more than three hours, Long Beach and Washington staggered through their second-round game in the Pony League World Series.
It was not a thing of beauty as the two teams combined for 10 errors and made enough mental and physical mistakes to last the tournament.
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Washington has little time to think about this loss as it will play Kingwood, Texas, at 8 tonight.
"It's hard to put it into perspective," said Washington manager Tim Gorby. "You get some momentum and one little blunder makes everything overflow. We have to learn how to put this behind us."
Washington faltered in all parts of the game. Besides allowing 13 runs, Washington's pitching threw six wild pitches, had three passed balls, balked once and hit a batter. The All-Stars also had a player thrown out by the right fielder in the fifth inning
Even the scoreboard malfunctioned in the fifth inning, showing Washington trailing 92-0 before it was corrected.
The game began well for Washington as Zach Barnes cracked a two-run homer in the first inning for a 2-0 lead.
Whatever momentum Washington had evaporated in a disastrous third inning, in which Long Beach sent 11 batters to the plate and scored six times. Four of the runs were unearned, thanks to three Washington errors, and that turned a 2-0 deficit into a 6-2 lead for Long Beach.
"We never recovered after the third inning," Gorby said. "You can't make those type of mistakes in a game of this magnitude."
It all began with a one-out grounder to third by Sean Buckle that first baseman Sam Interval made a nice pick on but brought his foot off the bag for a tough-luck error.
Spencer Troutman followed with a single to left, moving Buckle to second. Washington starter Julien Anderson then hit Chris Hubbard with a pitch to load the bases. Cleanup hitter Alex Campbell blooped a single to right that scored two runs, the second coming in when Cory Iams held the ball a second too long before throwing it in.
Taylor Sparks then hit a grounder to shortstop Brad Martin, who tried to get Campbell at third base but threw poorly for an error.
Then came the strangest play of the inning. Dylan Romo topped a grounder between the pitcher's mound and first base. Anderson and Interval converged, but no one was covering first base. Anderson tried to chase Romo to first but failed. Meanwhile, Sparks was streaking toward third base. Anderson's throw was wild, allowing Sparks to score to make it 5-2. One out later, Matt Treece singled in Romo to make it 6-2.
"This was an uncharacteristic game for us because of the mistakes. I think we were a little rusty," said Long Beach manager Rick Romo. "In that third inning, we put the ball in play. And if you put the ball in play, then you are going to make things happen. Luckily, we did that. We've been down in a lot of games and came back. This teams never feels that they are out of a game."
It didn't get much better for Washington. In the fifth inning, Long Beach scored four times to take a 10-2 lead. The big blast came from Buckle, who launched a three-run home run over the right field fence.
Long Beach added three runs in the seventh to make it 13-3 and Trevor Jones cut that lead to 13-4 with a solo home run in the bottom of the seventh.
