Harvard Loses Confidence and Wild Card to Cerritos

Harvard High Coach Jim Brink said his team has come back from big deficits all year.

In Wednesday’s 3-A Southern Section wild-card baseball game against Cerritos, the Saracens came back once again. This time, however, it wasn’t enough. The Dons downed Harvard, 9-8.

“We can talk about what could’ve, would’ve, should’ve been,” Brink said, “but that doesn’t help. They got a couple of clutch hits that we didn’t get. We helped them a little bit, but I’m still happy about our performance in general.”

Harvard (13-8-1) took a 7-4 lead in the fourth by pushing across three runs on one hit. Cerritos countered with five runs in the fifth.

The Saracens had men on second and third with nobody out in the fifth but couldn’t take advantage of reliever Rob Jones, who struck out Pete Sickle to end the threat.

“When I saw Jones come in I lost my confidence in a big inning and started to play conservatively,” Brink said. “That inning hurt us, but we wouldn’t stop trying. We rallied several times.”

The Saracens squandered several opportunities to score, stranding 11 men on base while gathering only seven hits.

“Everybody on their team hit really well, but we made contact too,” Harvard reliever Merritt Robinson said. “We didn’t get a lot of hits but they walked us a lot. Walks, hits, errors--any way to get on is fine.”

Robinson replaced starter Todd Stevenson in the first. Stevenson, who did not retire a batter, gave up three runs on four hits.

“Until today I had seen about three fastballs all year,” Cerritos third baseman Tony Mendoza said.

Mendoza, who drove in two runs and scored twice, said he benefitted from Harvard’s unfamiliarity with the Dons’ lineup.

“They were throwing a lot of fastballs, and that’s my pitch,” he said. “I was expecting to see some because they had never seen me. He tried to get one by me and I hurt him.”

Cerritos, which faces Glendora on Friday, pounded out 15 hits. Wade Caron, Jerry Duron and Mendoza had three each.

“We’ve been swinging a better bat recently,” Cerritos Coach Vern Brock said. “In a playoff game you never know what to expect, though. It’s always tough to play a wild-card game because neither team has anything to lose.”