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Baseball: Edison moves into first place in Sunset League

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After a pair of one-run victories over his fiercest city rival, Edison baseball Coach Steve Lambright wasn’t sure how much really separated his team from Marina.

‘Both teams are mirror images of each other, and we just happened to come out on the plus side of both games,’ Lambright said today after Edison pulled out a 2-1 victory in 10 innings at Marina, snapping the Vikings’ 10-game winning streak.

It wasn’t easy. Or quick.

The Chargers (16-3 overall, 9-1 Sunset League), ranked No. 4 in the Southland by The Times, defeated the No. 5 Vikings (18-3, 8-2) for the second time this season in come-from-behind fashion to move one game ahead in the league standings. They also won both games in their final at-bat.

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With a runner on second base and two out in the 10th inning, Donald Sneed reached out with one hand and whacked a two-strike curveball to shallow left-center field to score pinch-runner Jon Torres with the go-ahead run.

‘It was out of the strike zone and he went down and got just enough to hit it,’ Marina Coach Paul Renfrow said. ‘That was a good piece of hitting.’

There was also plenty of good pitching.

Edison pitcher Kurt Heyer (6-1), who is scheduled to start Friday’s game against Marina, pitched the final three innings to record the victory. The Arizona-bound right-hander escaped a two-on, two-out jam in the 10th when he got J.J. Baccari to hit a grounder to third baseman Ryan Miller. First baseman Tanner Phillips made a nice stretch to catch Miller’s throw for the final out.

Lambright said he used Heyer in relief because ‘I felt like we had to get today’s game.’ Heyer could still pitch seven more innings Friday per California Interscholastic Federation rules, but Lambright said he did not know whether Heyer was capable of pitching that deep into the game. He’s pitched as many as eight innings in one week this season, Lambright said.

Having put a runner on second base with two out in the bottom of the seventh, Marina would have won the game had Edison left fielder Chris Czerniachowski not made a diving catch near the foul line for the inning’s final out to rob Jason Aden.

Edison’s Henry Owens and Marina’s Race Parmenter each pitched seven solid innings, allowing only one run apiece. Eric Snyder homered for the Chargers in the second, wiping out the 1-0 lead the Vikings had taken an inning earlier on Chad Lewis’ run-scoring double.

‘It’s always hard to lose a game like that,’ Renfrow said. ‘They’ve gotten the breaks so far and it’s something we have to try to overcome. You’ve got to move on and keep playing.’

--Ben Bolch

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