Glendale Babe Ruth ends season in El Segundo

Needing a win Monday afternoon to extend the season, the Glendale 15-U Babe Ruth baseball team instead called it a year at the All-Star State Tournament at Stevenson Field in El Segundo.

Glendale was hoping to advance into Tuesday’s championship series, but came up short via a 7-0 loss to El Segundo, which vaulted the host team into the final versus Torrance.

“It was a good run and outside of our last game, we were in every game this year,” Glendale Manager Eric Mahoney said. “We did well during the Connie Mark season and maybe we thought it would be the same in this tournament and it wasn’t. This was a good, tough tournament.”

Glendale fell behind almost immediately as the home team surrendered a pair of runs in the first and second innings each before allowing three in the fifth inning.

Glendale tallied four hits, two of which came in the seventh.

Aidan Phillips singled with two outs in the seventh, advanced to second via a wild pitch and then tried to score on a single from Thomas Keller.

Unfortunately for Glendale, the Jewel City squad was blanked when Phillips was thrown out at the plate to end the game and preserve the blanking.

“That was really our only chance to score in the entire game,” said Mahoney, a first-year manager who is in his third year of coaching overall. “We just ran into a good team and I think it’s fair to say that the two best teams in the tournament are playing each other.”

Mahoney’s squad faced every team involved and opened the double-elimination tournament with a 2-1 loss Saturday to Torrance that ended with a bases-loaded strikeout in the seventh inning.

In the second-chance bracket, Glendale defeated Heartwell of Long Beach, 9-5, on Sunday.

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Follow Andrew J. Campa on Twitter: @campadresports.