Baseball: Montgomery and Hart fall short in duel

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The much-anticipated duel between Long Beach Wilson‘s Aaron Hicks and Hart‘s Mike Montgomery lived up to its billing on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately for the Indians, it was Montgomery, pictured, who blinked first.

Before tossing five innings of no-hit ball to finish the game, Montgomery surrendered five hits and three earned runs (he also had two balks) in the first two innings as the visiting Bruins pulled off a 4-2 victory over Hart in the Southern Section-Toyota Division I quarterfinals.

Montgomery’s performance was solid when you consider the team he was going up against, but Hicks’ performance was even better. The USC-bound standout struck out eight and frustrated the Hart batters with his 95-mph fastball. They finally got a taste of what their competition has had to chew on all season.

Even though they fell to the defending division champions, the Indians are a little bummed to know their goal of winning their first division title since 1999 has evaporated. Montgomery and Trevor Bauer formed, perhaps, the best pitching duo in the division and, as everyone at Hart HS saw on Friday, pitching can take you a long way.

Baseball is one of the most unpredictable sports and Hart becomes the third prominent SF Valley/North regional league champion (Crespi and St. Bonaventure are the others) to fall out of the playoffs earlier than I expected.

-- Austin Knoblauch

-- Image by Austin Knoblauch