Baseball: NBBA Bronco ousted
WHITTIER — On the day Conrad Olivier-Meier turned 12 years old, he also turned a triple play for the Newport Harbor Baseball Assn. All-Stars.
The team got Olivier-Meier and teammate Colin Leigh, who turned 12 on Wednesday, a cake for Saturday’s game in the PONY West Zone Southern California Super Region Bronco-11 tournament. While the two celebrated their birthdays together, they preferred to celebrate a win.
Olivier-Meier and Leigh came oh so close.
Newport Beach lost for the second time in as many days at York Field in Whittier, as Escondido rallied for 5-4 win in the loser’s bracket, eliminating Newport Beach from the tournament.
Newport Beach’s first appearance in the Super Region ended after a promising start in its second game in the double-elimination tournament. Newport Beach jumped out to a 3-0 lead, but it couldn’t hold it.
“I think they showed a lot to come back from a [14-3] beating yesterday [from Simi Valley],” Newport Beach Manager Shawn Miller said. “To come back and hold a team like Escondido to a 5-4 game [says a lot]. Giving up five runs in this tournament was a fantastic effort.
“For the boys to be able to play 21 games at this level of baseball [and] have the [17-4] record they have is a real tribute to all of them.”
Escondido’s one big inning was the bottom of the third, when it scored all of its five runs. All the runs came with two outs, as Escondido produced six hits.
Newport Beach, which trailed, 5-3, after three innings, cut the deficit in the fourth. After Nick Salmon led off with a single, Peter Bonin’s two-out double down the left-field line brought Salmon home to make it a one-run game.
Newport Beach had chances to tie or go ahead in the fifth, sixth innings and seventh innings. After stranding a runner on third base in the fifth, Newport Beach’s best opportunity came when it loaded the bases with one out in the sixth.
Escondido made a pitching change after Leigh and Nate Chambliss each got aboard via walks to start the sixth. Liam Myers, a left-hander, entered and got the first batter he faced to fly out to left field. Then he walked Tyler Duss to load the bases for Luca Curci.
Curci was the fifth straight batter to face a full count in the sixth inning. Curci hit the next pitch he saw hard, flying out to center field, but the runner on third did not tag up to try and possibly tie the game at 5-5. Myers induced a groundout to leave the inning unscathed.
“The ball was hit so hard he could not get back in time [to tag up],” Miller said of the runner on third base. “That was not a popup. That was a line drive.”
A line drive is what led to Olivier-Meier recording the triple play in the sixth inning.
With runners on the corners and no outs, Escondido’s Tyler Pirtle drilled Curci’s pitch right at Olivier-Meier at third base. He made the catch, and with the runner off the bag, Olivier-Meier ran over and stepped on third base to get the second out. He then fired to Bonin at first base to complete the triple play.
The rare triple play kept Newport Beach within striking distance, as the game moved to the seventh.
After Myers got the first batter to ground out in the seventh, he hit Olivier-Meier. A wild pitch allowed Olivier-Meier to get to second base.
With the tying run in scoring position, Myers struck out a batter for the second out. He walked Leigh, putting the go-ahead run at first base, but Myers got the hitter to foul out to first baseman Joshua Vanderwal to end the game.
“This demonstrated everything,” Miller said about his team’s will to compete. “They came back [from being] down, 5-3. We came back to [make it], 5-4. We held them scoreless for the last three innings. We made a triple play. Virtually every kid got on base.”
Every kid also got to eat cake afterward. There were no candles to blow out because one parent said it was too windy, but before anyone got a piece of cake, Olivier-Meier praised his coaches.
“[They’re] the greatest coaches you’ll ever find,” Olivier-Meier said of Miller and his two coaches, Jim Chambliss and Mark Duss.
