Teobaldi Axes Calabasas With One Swing, 3-1 : A Game of Emotions

It’s already an intense rivalry, but throw in a couple of good pitchers, questionable umpiring, two player ejections and some last-inning heroics and what you’ve got is an Agoura-Calabasas baseball game.

This time, Agoura came away with a 3-1 win when catcher John Teobaldi hit a fastball over the fence in left center with two men on and one out in the seventh inning.

“I just got the ball up where he could extend his arms on it,” Calabasas starter Cort Wright said. “I was going for the out and he hit a good pitch--he hit a strike.”

Wright held Agoura (4-3) to four hits and struck out nine using that pitch and a strange-looking curve. But his counterpart, Donnie Rea, allowed only one run--on a homer by Rob Beatty--and five hits in his first start.

Agoura threatened several times, but Calabasas turned three double plays.

That was enough until the seventh.

“I couldn’t pick a better time to hit a home run--in the seventh inning, against Calabasas,” Teobaldi said. “It feels great. I got a fastball in the wheelhouse and I just went for it.”

The game was another in a series of tense contests between the schools. In their first meeting, Agoura edged the Coyotes, 1-0.

“It started in football, continued in basketball and the first game in baseball, they really came out after us,” Rea said. “The Calabasas game brings out the best in us because we want to win so bad.”

And the intensity was such that two players were ejected.

In the sixth, Agoura third baseman Vince Shelton was thrown out after arguing with the base umpire about Eric Clove’s slide into the bag. In the seventh, Calabasas second baseman Rick Allen was given the thumb when he threw his bat in the air after tapping out to shortstop.

Both coaches strenuously objected the calls.

“This, by far, is one of the worst umpired games I’ve ever been involved with,” Calabasas Coach Gary Gray said. “I’m not saying that because we lost, either, because I think I got the least amount of crummy calls in the game. It’s one of our most bitter losses.”

Agoura Coach Fred Williams, who argued with plate umpire Clyde Breland most of the game, refused to comment on the officiating but did say he knew how Gray felt.

“I’ve been on the other end of losing like that and I know it doesn’t feel good,” Williams said. “Our pitcher got stronger and he (Wright) looked tired when he came out in the seventh. It was a hard-fought battle.”

Gray said the game shouldn’t have been so close.

“It was a question of making the wrong pitch at the wrong time,” he said. “It shouldn’t have come down to that, though. We must have had the bases loaded three times but didn’t take advantage of it. We had the opportunities but we didn’t cash in on them.”

The Coyotes had the bases loaded in the sixth when Beatty hit a blooper to center. Scott Galer made a diving catch, got up and fired home too late to get the sliding Clove.

Agoura appealed the play, arguing Clove had left third base early. The decision was reversed and it took Calabasas (3-2-1) out of a potentially big inning.

Two batters walked and one struck struck out in the bottom of the seventh to set the stage for Teobaldi’s heroics.

“Some things have happened in the past so the tension was there from the beginning,” Teobaldi said.

“They were ready to get us, but we were ready to get them, too.”