Southern Section 4-A Championship : Fountain Valley Defeats Camarillo for Title, 3-2 : Snowden Gets Start and Strikes Out 11

An unlikely championship contender picked an unlikely way to win the Southern Section 4-A baseball title Friday night.

Fountain Valley High School, which entered the last week of the regular season in fifth place in the Sunset League with a 5-7-1 record, scored two runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to overcome a 2-1 deficit and beat Camarillo, 3-2, in front of 4,786 spectators at Anaheim Stadium.

The winning run was scored when Camarillo shortstop Scott Cline, who has already accepted a baseball scholarship to UCLA, fielded Steve Miller’s ground ball but threw wide of first base, pulling Travis Willis off the bag and enabling pinch-runner Terry Reichert to score from third with two outs.

Camarillo had runners on first and second in the top of the seventh before Fountain Valley Coach Tom DeKraai brought ace pitcher Bob Sharpnack out of the bullpen to get Angel Barroso to ground out to end the game.

“It’s only fitting that we should fall behind and do it the hard way,” DeKraai said, after donning a T-shirt that read: Fountain Valley--1985 CIF Baseball Champions. “We’ve done it that way all year. I doubt we have enough left to even celebrate.”

Sharpnack came into the game with a 10-3 record and 117 strikeouts, but the starting assignment for the title game went to left-hander Don Snowden. DeKraai’s original plan called for Sharpnack to start, but the second-year Baron coach changed his mind on the eve of the title game. The decision turned out to be a good one.

“I’ve never seen him so loose for such a big game,” DeKraai said of Snowden. We feel he’s the best baseball player at our school.”

Said Snowden: “The pitches they got for hits were all good pitches. The first two were fisted hits, and I thought my fastball and curveball were as good as I’ve thrown all year.”

Snowden, who struck out 11, picked two runners off first base and threw out a runner going to second on a sacrifice attempt, was clutching the game ball afterward.

“I got a place for this ball on the top of my mantle,” he said.

It appeared that Snowden had ended the game with a 2-2 fastball to Camarillo catcher Brad Billups, but the umpire saw it a different way, and Snowden ultimately walked the No. 9 hitter, who had struck out two previous times. DeKraai didn’t hesitate to bring in Sharpnack for the final out.

“I thought the 2-2 pitch was a strike,” Snowden said. “When the umpire called it a ball, it threw my concentration off, and when the coach came out to pull me, I didn’t argue.”

Snowden kept Camarillo at bay and waited for his team to put together a rally. It finally came in the sixth.

Jeff Olson led off the inning with a single to right, prompting Camarillo Coach Ken Wagner to replace starting pitcher Joe Salomon with Charlie Fiacco.

Jim Reach greeted Fiacco with a sacrifice bunt to put the tying run in scoring position with one out. Chris Bugbee, who lost his starting job to Steve Miller late in the season, was called upon to pinch hit. A wild pitch moved Olson to third, and Bugbee brought him home with an opposite-field single to right, tying the game at 2-2.

“I watched him (Fiacco) warm up, and I saw he was throwing mostly fastballs,” Bugbee said. “I was looking for a sacrifice fly, but when he got two strikes on me, I just wanted to put the ball in play. When the count got to 2-2, he threw me three straight fastballs, and I nailed the third one.”

Fiacco then got Sam August to ground out before Miller came up and hit his fateful ground ball.

“In baseball, there’s always some luck involved,” DeKraai said. “You’re going to get a bad hop and a bad hop here and there.

“I must have said, ‘Throw it away,’ eight times in my mind before the kid even got the ball. There was no doubt the first baseman was off the bag. I saw a separation between his foot and the base.”

It didn’t take Camarillo long to send Sharpnack down to the Fountain Valley bullpen to begin getting loose. Angel Barroso led off the game by working Snowden to a full count before drawing a walk. Ken Sirak followed by laying down a sacrifice bunt that, as it turned out, wasn’t much of a sacrifice. Fountain Valley third baseman Jim Doyle charged the ball but couldn’t field it cleanly, enabling Sirak to reach first.

That brought up Scott Cline, who came into the game with a .506 batting average. Cline singled to left to drive in Barroso for the game’s first run. That brought DeKraai to the mound to try to settle Snowden down. Whatever he said worked as Snowden struck out the next two Camarillo hitters.

Hugh Heath looped a single to center, however, scoring Sirak to give the Scorpions a 2-0 lead. Cline tried to take third on the play but got caught in a rundown for the final out of the inning.

Chris Lillich led off the top of the second by drilling Snowden’s first pitch to the warning track in left field for a double. Snowden proceeded to strike out the next three hitters and was considerably more effective from that point. Over the next three innings, the only base runner he allowed came on a two-out walk to Charlie Fiasco in the third inning, and Snowden erased him with a pickoff throw to first as Fiasco was breaking for second.

Through six innings, Snowden had recorded 11 strikeouts and had allowed only four hits.

Fountain Valley scored a run in the bottom of the second on a walk to Jeff Olson, a single by Jim Reach, a sacrifice bunt by Terry Reichert and Sam August’s RBI sacrifice fly. The Barons wasted several scoring opportunities over the next three innings. They left runners at the corners in the third and stranded Jim Wayne at second in the fifth.