COMMUNITY COLLEGE BASEBALL ROUNDUP : Rancho Santiago Wins as Hitters Have a Field Day

SANTA ANA —  There they were, lined up behind the backstop of Rancho Santiago College’s baseball diamond.

They were scouts. A whole pack of them hanging out with their pads, their pencils, their watches and, of course, their radar guns.

They had come to see two of the best pitchers from the two best teams in the Orange Empire Conference: Ben Blomdahl of Riverside City College and Rancho Santiago left-hander Jerry Aschoff.

Instead of a pitching duel, they saw the two give up 17 hits and Rancho Santiago get a 15-5 victory to open a three-game lead over Riverside and Golden West in the conference standings.

Rancho Santiago (22-5, 11-3 in conference) got 11 hits and nine runs off Blomdahl in 5 2/3 innings.

The Dons finished with 18 hits, including three home runs, four doubles and nine singles.

Aschoff (4-2), who had allowed just two hits through seven innings, finished with a six-hitter, giving up five earned runs. Riverside fell to 20-9, 8-6.

“There were some hits today,” Rancho Santiago Coach Don Sneddon said. “Blomdahl’s a good pitcher, but we knew he had a tough time out in his last game so we wanted to get to him early.”

The Dons did.

After a single in the first inning, Brian Criss led off the third with a home run to left to tie the score at 1-1. One out later, Chris Floth put the Dons ahead when he lined a home run to right-center field.

At that point, it was still a competitive game--a pitcher can make a couple of mistakes and survive. But Blomdahl’s arm-meter was ticking: He still had seven runs and nine hits waiting him.

In the fourth, Criss hit a two-out, two-run double to give the Dons a 4-1 lead. Rancho Santiago scored but once in the fifth, but the sixth inning finally spelled relief for Blomdahl.

Robert Reimers reached base on an infield hit and stole second when Criss proved human by watching strike three.

But three of the next four batters doubled, and Blomdahl (8-3) left with three more runs in and another on the way when Jeremy Sherman hit the fourth double of the inning to score Conrad Colby.

In other Orange Empire games:

Cypress 9, Orange Coast 2--Kenny Kendrena, aided by seven errors that accounted for eight runs, picked up the complete-game victory at Orange Coast. Troy Babbitt went two for five with one RBI for Cypress (16-12, 5-8), and Mark Dodd had two hits and scored twice for OCC (12-15, 5-9).

Golden West 3, Saddleback 2 (12 innings)--Catcher Mark Magrann hit a solo homer in the top of the 12th inning to give Golden West the victory. In the fifth, Shelby Hart and Brian Mena hit back-to-back homers to give Golden West (18-6, 9-5) a 2-0 lead. Brent Ferguson hit a two-run home run in the sixth for Saddleback (9-14, 3-11).