Angelus League : Pitching Is No Longer a Concern at Mater Dei : Watson Throws Four-Hitter in Monarch Win

Bob Ickes, Mater Dei High School’s baseball coach, had only one genuine concern entering the 1985 season--pitching.

He watched his staff give up 28 walks in 14 innings in a dual scrimmage with Valencia and Westminster before the season opened and figured it might be a long year. Then, he watched his club simply outhit three opposing teams to gain the championship of the Santa Ana-Newport Mesa Tournament.

Finally, he saw his team blend the necessary hitting, fielding and pitching in a league-opening victory against St. Paul and he knew he had the prospects for a championship team.

The Monarchs certainly played every phase of the game well on Saturday, collecting 12 hits and getting a complete-game four-hitter from left-hander Steve Watson to gain an impressive 10-2 victory over Bishop Amat in Santa Ana.

The victory gave the Monarchs a two-game lead in the Angelus League with six games remaining and avenged their only loss of the season. Mater Dei is 8-1 in the six-team league and 16-1 overall while Bishop Amat slipped to 6-3 and 13-5.

Watson (4-0) allowed only two runs in the fifth inning and continually kept the Lancers off stride with a lively fastball and a good changeup. He struck out six and didn’t allow a hit until the fourth inning.

“I felt real good and I would have to say this was one of my better games,” Watson said. “They got a couple of cheap hits off me in the fifth, but otherwise everything seemed to go my way.”

Watson had missed two outings before Saturday with tendinitis in his biceps. The Lancers bunched together three hits and a squeeze bunt to score their fifth-inning runs, but only two of their four hits left the infield.

Mater Dei opened a 2-0 lead in the first inning and then put the game away with five runs in the fifth. Every Monarch starter except second baseman Chris Gill had a hit with catcher Anthony Follico getting two singles and a double and third baseman Tony Gardea scoring three times.

The teams were tied, 2-2, when Mater Dei sent 10 batters to the plate to score five runs in the fifth. Center fielder Mike Kelly had a run-scoring double that hit the left-field fence, first baseman Ted Flores lined a two-run single to left and shortstop Bobby DeJardin stroked a two-run double down the left-field line.

The Monarchs, the top-ranked team in the Orange County Sportswriters’ Assn. prep baseball poll, wrapped up the victory in the sixth inning with three more runs, two of them coming on Rich Albert’s opposite-field double to right.

“We have good hitters all the way down the lineup,” Ickes said. “I was a little worried when they came back and tied the game. We had a four-run lead against them the other day and our bats went silent.”

Bishop Amat rallied from a 4-0 deficit in their last meeting en route to a 10-4 rout. The loss spoiled the Monarchs’ dream of a perfect season and the chance to match their basketball team’s undefeated campaign.

“Maybe it’s better that we lost and took some of the pressure off,” Ickes said. “The kids wanted to go undefeated, but deep down the staff wanted the pressure of being undefeated off before the playoffs begin. You saw what happened to Notre Dame last year.”

Notre Dame entered the playoffs as USA Today’s top-ranked team in the nation with an undefeated record and never reached the championship game of the single-elimination tournament. Mater Dei is hoping to match its 1980 team that won the 4-A division title.

“This team is probably a closer-knit group than the 1980 club,” Ickes said. “We have some excellent infielders--Gardea, DeJardin and Gill--on this team and we can hit. But we also learned that on any given day, we can get beat.”