15-inning state playoff pushes South Whidbey toward title | FALCON BASEBALL

Published 3:43 pm Friday, May 29, 2015

History will be made when South Whidbey baseball plays for the state championship.

The Falcons defeated the Cashmere Bulldogs 3-0 on Friday morning to advance to the state 1A championship game on Saturday, May 30. It is the first time in South Whidbey High School history and in recent memory that the baseball team reached the title match.

South Whidbey took a first-inning lead after junior leadoff hitter Ricky Muzzy singled and was scored on a RBI single into right field by senior pitcher Mo Hamsa.

The Falcons padded the lead in the fifth with freshman Taylor Brown pinch running for senior Trent Fallon and scoring from first base on a hit by junior Charlie Patterson. The third run came in the seventh on a squeeze hit by sophomore Connor Antich to score sophmore Will Simms.

Facing the top of Cashmere’s order in the seventh inning, Muzzy gave up a double but stranded the Bulldog runner there with back to-back outs to secure their entry to the championship game.

“There was a bit of a celebration,” Falcon head coach Tom Fallon said in a phone interview after the game in Yakima on Friday.

The win was a major departure from the victories that got them there the previous weekend.

Having already survived a 14-inning epic in the previous playoff series, adding one more inning in the opening round of the state 1A baseball tournament was just another game for South Whidbey this past weekend.

South Whidbey won a 15-inning battle 6-5 with Seattle Christian in the first round. In the second game in Anacortes on May 23, South Whidbey took a first-inning lead and held on 3-1 over Cascade Christian to reach the semifinal round. Being a game away from the championship bout is the furthest any South Whidbey High School baseball team has ever reached, according to the team’s head coach who played for one of the first squads back in the early 1980s.

“It’s definitely an accomplishment,” Hamsa said Wednesday during the team’s final home practice. “I’m enormously proud of the coaching staff and these guys. Beginning of the year we weren’t winning many games, and people not on the team were doubting us and saying, ‘They might not be that good this year.’ We responded, we heard that and came back with ‘This is our team, and we’re going to win games.’ ”

Things looked bleak for South Whidbey in that first game. After giving up three runs, largely on errors, in the seventh inning, Seattle Christian scored another to take the lead and claim victory. Seattle Christian players celebrated on the field before an umpires gathering reversed a call to extend the game to extra innings.

“I thought it was over, then they called me back out,” said Muzzy, who was on the mound at the time. “It was an emotional roller coaster, to say the least.”

Fallon spoke with the umps about the call, one in which the ball went out of play and should have stopped the runner from reaching home. The umps agreed, halting Seattle Christian’s premature celebration and extending the game past the seventh inning. Fallon said the timeout allowed the players to refocus from nearly blowing a 5-1 lead in the final frame as they went into extra frames.

“It’s hard to even relive,” Fallon said Wednesday after a deep sigh.

Muzzy held Seattle Christian scoreless through the ninth inning, but South Whidbey couldn’t cross the plate either.

Finally in the 12th, South Whidbey got runners on base and to home. Hamsa, threw six innings before moving to first base, led with a single. The Seattle Christian starting pitcher was pulled — after 12 innings on the mound — and Falcon senior catcher Brent Piehler sacrificed to move Hamsa to second base. A defensive interference call sent Hamsa to third base. Charlie Patterson, a junior outfielder, reached first base and intentionally got in a pickle during a quick jump to second base. Hamsa used the diversion to score, giving South Whidbey the go-ahead run with only three outs away from moving on.

“The place went ballistic,” said Fallon, who praised the largely pro-South Whidbey crowd at the Anacortes field, a hop, skip and jump from their home turf.

With Patterson on the mound, Seattle Christian got a runner on base with a walk, a single, and a pair of balks to score the tying run. Fallon said the number of balks called in the game was unusually high.

Tied at 5-5, neither team threatened until the 15th inning. Patterson led with a single and reached third on some grounders and steals. With one out, sophomore Austin Sterba fought off fouls, and hit a two-strike squeeze that scored Patterson for the go-ahead run.

Fallon put Will Simms on the mound in the 13th and kept him there in the final frame. Facing Seattle Christian’s top batters, Simms got them to hit into a grounder, a pop fly to center, and a grounder at third base to seal the win.

“We went absolutely nuts,” Fallon said. “It was absolute mayhem.”

Every Falcon player on the field recorded a hit in the 4 hour, 30-minute game. Most high school games, by contrast, last at most a couple of hours, maybe close to three, and wrap after the seventh inning.

The second game, played a short while later on the same field, was a much simpler affair. Usually a closing pitcher, Muzzy threw a complete game — the first in his high school career — in 73 pitches.

“I don’t think I got one strikeout,” he said. “I went right after them, made them put the ball in play and trusted my defense.”

“Me not being an everyday pitcher, I just go up there and throw strikes,” he added. “I felt no pressure, I don’t know why.”