Community College Baseball Tournament : Cerritos Owns a Rare Commodity : In a Hitters’ Game, Falcons Have Abundance of Pitching

In community college baseball, hitters dominate and good pitchers are the rarest of commodities. Most schools are lucky to have one dependable starter; two are considered a luxury.

Cerritos College, however, isn’t like most schools. The Falcons have not one, not two, not three but four good starting pitchers.

There is Dave Serrano, who is 11-1, Al Osuna, who is 10-1, John Rodriguez, who is 7-1 and John Agundez, who, despite being only 2-2, will pitch for Cerritos (35-5) today against College of Marin (20-15) in a first-round game of the state community college championship tournament on Fresno State’s Beiden Field at 7:30 p.m.

And all that pitching has made George Horton, Cerritos’ first-year coach, confident about his team’s chances of winning the seventh state title in school history.

“I have a good feeling about the tournament and I know we are capable of winning it, especially if we win our first two games and stay out of the loser’s bracket,” Horton said. “That way, we’ll avoid playing in doubleheaders, and our pitchers will be well-rested.”

Interestingly, pitching was a concern of Horton’s prior to the start of the season. He knew he had a solid group of returning players in the outfield and infield, but he feared his pitching staff might night survive the rigors of the tough South Coast Conference, where .300 team batting averages are common.

But Serrano, Osuna, Rodriguez and Agundez helped the Falcons compile a 2.78 team earned-run average, microscopic in the aluminum bat era, and Cerritos breezed to its first SCC title since 1979.

Usually, the SCC title is decided on the final day of the regular season, but Cerritos took all the fun out of the pennant race this year by clinching the title with two weeks to go in the regular season.

Horton is starting Agundez, who worked both as a starter and reliever, against Marin in order to save his aces for the later rounds.

Don’t get the impression that Cerritos lives by pitching alone, however. The Falcons hit .348 as a team and field well, too.

Offensively, Cerritos is led by center fielder Scott Wilkinson, the SCC’s Player of the Year. Wilkinson, a transfer from Santa Ana College and a former prep star at Loara High School, batted .406 with 10 home runs and 61 RBIs.

Other top hitters for the Falcons include third baseman Craig Worthington (.428, seven home runs, 44 RBIs) and first baseman Ron Ewart (.344 with a school-record 13 triples).

Meanwhile, community college observers are calling Cerritos’ infield one of the best ever.

Ewart, second baseman Mike Benjamin, shortstop Ever Magallanes and Worthington stop just about everything hit their way. They rarely make errors on routine plays, and routinely make spectacular plays.

“Cerritos’ infield plays the kind of defense that would make a major-league manager proud,” said Mike Gillespie, College of the Canyons coach.

Cerritos swept Citrus, the Inland Valley Conference champion, in the regional playoff doubleheader Sunday, 5-4 and 8-7. Both games, as the score indicates, were tough and Horton thinks it has toughened Cerritos.

“When you play close, crucial games like we did against Citrus and win them, it really gives you confidence,” he said.

“Citrus really battled us hard. All their outs, it seemed, were hard outs and luckily they weren’t able to get a few clutch hits. We had a natural letdown after winning our conference, but now, after beating Citrus, we seem to have our momentum going again.”

State Tournament Notes

In other first-round games of the four-day, double-elimination tournament today, College of the Canyons (28-12) plays Mission College of Santa Clara (21-10-1), Laney (27-9) plays Oxnard (25-10-1) and Sacramento City (30-8) plays San Bernardino (30-10). . . . If Cerritos and College of the Canyons both win their tournament openers, the Falcons and Cougars will play each other in the second round. Cerritos took two out of three games from College of the Canyons this year. . . . the Cougars’ best pitcher and hitter is the same player, Frank Halcovich, the a co-Player of the Year of the Mountain Valley Conference. Halcovich batted .435 this year with 7 home runs and a team-high 39 RBIs, and on the mound was 8-4 with an earned-run average of 2.22. . . . For the first two days of the tournament, games will be played at two sites: Beiden Field and Fresno City College’s John Euless Park. Saturday and Sunday, all games will be played at Euless. . . . As was the case for the state basketball tournament here in March, no Orange County schools are represented.