Baseball: Hans Hansen pitches Harvard-Westlake into championship game

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Hans Hansen, a junior pitcher at Studio City Harvard-Westlake making his first start of the season, turned in the best pitching performance of his high school career on Friday, throwing nine shutout innings to enable the Wolverines to pull out a 1-0 victory over Boca Raton (Fla.) American Heritage in a semifinal game of the National High School Invitational in Cary, N.C.

Harvard-Westlake (12-2-1) will play Santa Ana Mater Dei (10-3) in Saturday’s 6 a.m. (Pacific time) final that can be seen on streaming video.

Hansen struck out two, walked one and gave up eight hits. He’s usually Harvard-Westlake’s closer. He and Shaun Anderson of American Heritage matched each other pitch for pitch until the bottom of the ninth, when Jack Flaherty led off with a bunt single.

After a walk, Anderson was pulled. Flaherty moved to third on a ball in the dirt. He scored the winning run on a ground ball hit by Max Fried to the shortstop that ended up as an infield single.

-- Eric Sondheimer