Southern Section 4-A Baseball : Fountain Valley Gets 2 Runs in 6th to Win

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.

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, who allowed two runs on four hits in 6 innings, struck out 11 and walked four.

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.