Baseball: Barons rally to edge Newport Harbor
As band members practiced playing the cymbal at Fountain Valley High, the only sounds louder than the instrument on campus came off Cade Seabold’s bat.
Ping!
Ping!
Ping!
The Newport Harbor senior blasted three home runs, each to left field. He hit a towering solo shot in the second inning, fisted a two-run homer in the third inning and belted a three-run homer in the seventh inning.
The last one created the biggest stir, breaking a tie to put the Sailors up by three runs. Three outs in the bottom of the seventh are all they needed to beat the Barons. They wound up giving up three runs and playing extra innings on Wednesday.
Seabold’s stellar performance, he went four for four with six runs batted in, was for naught.
With two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning and a runner on third base, Conrad Villafuerte’s walk-off hit lifted the Barons to a 10-9 come-from-behind win.
Fountain Valley was able to enjoy a walk-off victory in Sunset League play, five days after it lost in that fashion at Huntington Beach. The Barons moved to 2-2 in league, while the Sailors dropped to 1-3.
“We really needed this win,” said Villafuerte, who went two for five with an RBI. “We knew we could always come back.”
Villafuerte came through in the final two innings. With the Barons behind, 9-6, Justin Mazzone, a senior bound for Seattle University, and Villafuerte hit consecutive doubles to start a one-out rally in the seventh off reliever AJ Stefano.
Justin Yang brought in a run with a groundout, cutting the deficit to two. Trevor Staffieri, who went two for two with two walks, singled in his second run, making it a one-run game. At that point, Newport Harbor Coach Evan Chalmers decided to stick with his right-hander.
Stefano got ahead of the next batter, Parker Smith, who fouled off the first two pitches. Two pitches later, Smith hit a double over the third baseman and down the left-field line to even things at 9-9.
“I give them credit for continuing [to battle] down by three,” Chalmers said. “We’re taking our lumps in the first round, but I think we’re continuing to grow. I told them with this kind of effort we’re going to do some damage in the league and it doesn’t matter who we play. That’s no consolation because it’s disappointing to lose a game like that, when you’re up by three.”
The Sailors were three outs away from improving to .500 in league. After squandering the lead in the seventh, Newport Harbor almost played two more innings.
Zack Durham started the eighth getting the leadoff hitter to fly out toward the gap in right-center field, where Seabold made a nice catch. Trent Sievers then doubled toward the left-field line, one of eight doubles the Barons produced.
The next hitter was Sebastian Murillo, a freshman committed to the University of Arizona. After Sievers stole third base and the count went full, the Barons called for a squeeze play. The play was risky and it did not work. Murillo fouled it, and he was out.
With first base open, the Sailors intentionally walked Mazzone, Fountain Valley’s No. 3 left-handed hitter who was three for four with a three-run home run, coming in the first inning. They elected to pitch to the cleanup hitter, Villafuerte. Durham, a left-hander, left a curveball up and Villafuerte hit it up the middle to win the game.
“Every win in the Sunset League is humungous and every game is going to be a fight to the finish,” said Fountain Valley Coach Deric Yanagisawa, who is in his fifth season at the helm. “This is what you sign up for when you want to play in the Sunset League. This is why kids come to play.”
Seabold came ready, doing something Yanagisawa had never seen at Fountain Valley, and that is hit three homers in one game. The ball tends to fly at Fountain Valley, and Seabold made the Barons pay for pitching to him with runners on first and second and one out in the seventh.
Yanagisawa said he did not want to load the bases. The first pitch that Seabold saw from Yang was a slider and he crushed it.
Seabold topped his two-home run game against Santa Fe Springs St. Paul on March 6. The only difference from that game to this one was the Sailors won, which is more important to Seabold than any stats.
“They just hit the ball well,” Seabold said of the Barons. “You got to tip your cap to that.”
Sunset League
Fountain Valley 10, Newport Harbor 9
(eight innings)
SCORE BY INNINGS
NHHS 015 000 30 – 9 12 2
FV 303 000 31 – 10 13 1
Mahaffy, Stefano (6), Durham (8) and Crabbe; Brand, Campbell (3), Yang (6), Perez (7) and Mazzone. W – Perez. L – Durham. 2B – Stefano (NH), Olmstead (NH), Adame (FV) 2, Murillo (FV), Staffieri (FV), Mazzone (FV), Villafuerte (FV), Smith (FV), Sievers (FV). HR – Seabold (NH) 3, Mazzone (FV).
Twitter: @ByDCP
