Warriors off to Show

This story was published in the May 17, 1992, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.

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Lewis-Clark State College baseball coach Ed Cheff is highly regarded as a great motivator of his players.

So heading into Saturday’s play at the NAIA Area 1 Tournament at Lewiston’s Harris Field, he had some more words of wisdom for his players.

“Coach Cheff told us before the game that today could be a day that you could remember your whole life,” LCSC second baseman Sid Maldonado said. “That’s exactly what it is.”

The Warriors made it a memorable day by beating Azusa Pacific twice to earn the title and advance to the NAIA World Series for the 15th time in 17 years. The Warriors beat the Cougars 12-8 in a wild 11-inning first game and then breezed to the title with a 16-3 win in front of a crowd estimated at 2,655.

“I thought this was the greatest 24 hours I’ve spent at the ballpark,” Cheff said after LCSC (50-10) won three games, including a see-saw 5-4 victory over Hawaii Pacific in a loser-out game Friday night. The three wins all were necessary since LCSC lost to the Cougars 8-2 in the second round of the double-elimination tournament.

“It’s unbelievable,” Cheff said. “I mean we’ve won some national championships, but I can’t remember a day where a team made a greater effort than this one. Look at what we did in 24 hours. It was amazing. We saw Hawaii Pacific’s best guy and a quality guy from Azusa and then we get tremendous relief pitching.”

Saturday’s first game was basically the title game. Cougar coach Tony Barbone used five pitchers in an attempt to avoid a second game. After LCSC won the opener, Barbone was forced to used Ralph Montenegro, who is the ace of the staff, but he also was the starting pitcher in the Cougars’ opener of the tournament just two days ago. It showed as he didn’t make it through the first inning.

“Our game plan was to do the same thing and focus on one pitch at a time,” Barbone said. “I don’t think you ever focus on two games.”

The first game was a battle as both teams had several opportunities to either pull away or win it.

Despite being out-hit, having its pitching staff allow 11 walks and its defense commit seven errors, Azusa Pacific nearly won the game twice before LCSC finally scored four runs in the top of the 11th inning for the win, including three on a home run by Maldonado.

The key play came in the bottom of the ninth as Azusa Pacific had runners on first and second with one out. LCSC relief pitcher Jeremy Fields had a full count on the clean-up hitter, Pedro Carranza, when he turned and picked off the lead runner on second base for the second out.

What made it such a big play was that Fields hit the next two batters to load the bases. If the lead runner was still on, he would have been forced home with the game-winning run and it would have been the Cougars, not the Warriors, heading to Des Moines, Iowa for the Series, which opens Friday and runs through May 29.

“I put the play on myself,” Maldonado said. “I saw that he (the lead runner) was jumping around between pitches and it was a full count and one out so I figured it was a good time for them to (hit-and-) run because the hitter wasn’t a strikeout hitter. So I said let’s do the reverse pickoff move and get this guy out and that’s what happened. It got the team pumped up.”

“That’s a huge play,” Barbone said. “We talked about a pitch-by-pitch mentality and if you don’t have it in big games against great clubs with great histories, you are just not going to get to the next level. When you are David playing Goliath, you need to make sure you do everything right. We didn’t, and we didn’t catch the ball. We set the game back a few years in some areas today. When we reflect on this, we are not going to be too happy about it.”

The Cougars (35-13) fought back to tie the game at 2-2 and 4-4 in the early innings, but LCSC went up 8-4 in the sixth with a three-run inning, thanks to two Cougar errors and a two-run single by Corey Garrison.

Azusa Pacific again tied the game at 8-8 in the bottom of the sixth as the Warriors returned the favor with a two-run error.

The Cougars then put a runner on third base in the eighth and ninth inning but failed to score, while LCSC went down in order in the ninth and 10th.

The Warriors finally broke free in the 11th when Dave Bingham opened with a walk and Garrison reached on an error. Travis Woods then singled to load the bases and Kenny Woods added a sacrifice fly to score Bingham. Maldonado then made it a four-run cushion by homering to straight-away center field.

“He threw me a fastball right down the middle and I just hit it,” said Maldonado, who led LCSC with three hits and four RBI in the game. “As soon as I hit it, I knew it was gone.” Only two of LCSC’s 12 runs in the game were earned as the 4-hour 18-minute contest featured nine errors, 21 hits, five hit batters and 16 walks.

In the second game, LCSC was the home team and opened an 8-0 first-inning lead as Azusa Pacific went through three pitchers. LCSC used only four hits, but took advantage of two hit batters, three walks and some poor fielding judgment as Cougar infielders tried to throw LCSC runners out at the plate twice (both too late) instead of getting the easy out at first.

“The one thing you don’t want to do is let them get rolling,” Barbone said. “They are like a steamship going down river. If they get ‘going, they are pretty tough to stop because they play with a lot of emotion. It’s pretty tough to stop that ship when it’s flying like that.”

Kenny Woods and Bingham had three hits and three RBI apiece while Marvin Benard and Ephan added two RBI. Those four, who composed the first four hitters in the second game lineup, combined for nine hits, 10 RBI and six runs scored.

On the mound, LCSC got a strong performance from Victor Darrensbourg (9-2), who went the distance, tossing a six-hitter while walking six and striking out 12.

“I will remember this day for a long time,” Cheff said. “It was a great day to be associated with these guys. It’s neat to be in that kind of situation. It means more to come back and win it then if you don’t get beat. We had our backs to the wall and I think we wanted it. It’s neat to be in a position to have a day that you will never forget.”