3-A Baseball Playoffs : No. 1 Sonora Loses in 9 to Lompoc, 7-5

The Sonora High School baseball team had reason to expect many things from this season, the best in school history.

But getting eliminated in extra innings, 7-5, in the second round of the Southern Section 3-A playoffs by Lompoc’s answer to Dan Quisenberry wasn’t one of them.

The Raiders (25-2), were held hitless until the fifth inning Tuesday at Fullerton College by Lompoc’s Bill Bentley (9-1).

The thin, red-headed right-hander blew out his pitching arm in early adolescence, but resurrected his career last summer when he adopted a submarine sidearm delivery.

It’s not a style too many high school ballplayers have faced, as Sonora Coach Gordon Blakeley pointed out after the game.

By the time the Raiders, the No. 1 team in the county and the top seed in the 3-A playoffs, got adjusted to Bentley, it was too late. They were the latest Orange County victim of the Lompoc jinx, which has claimed such high-flying local teams as El Dorado two years ago and Santa Ana in last year’s semifinals.

Baseball is very big in Lompoc. Despite the four-hour drive, the team showed up in Fullerton Tuesday with an entourage of 40 fans, a radio broadcasting crew and a local celebrity--Roy Howell, a former Toronto Blue Jay, Milwaukee Brewer and Lompoc Brave, who wore a uniform and coached first base.

Lompoc has been to the playoffs 16 times in Coach Dan Bodary’s 20 years, made the finals six times and won three titles. The team’s unseeded status and relatively modest 16-7 record entering Tuesday’s game was deceptive because it was polished against a number of 4-A schools in the spring. Lompoc went 11-1 in the Northern League.

The Braves took advantage of eight walks by three of the four Sonora pitchers, as well as eight hits and two hit batsmen.

Raider pitcher Brian Needham (8-1) started, lacked control and gave up three earned runs in the first inning. Blakeley replaced him in the second with the county’s top pitcher, David Bird, who had hurled a complete game only three days earlier.

Bird went seven innings, allowing five hits and five walks--two intentional--and three runs as his arm tired in the two extra innings.

The climax of the game came after Raider catcher Ron Lesperance broke Bentley’s spell with a bloop single over third base and Scott Rajcic followed up with a solid hit in the fifth inning, proving that the unorthodox Bentley was not unhittable.

The Raiders broke loose for two runs in the sixth when Rob Stuart doubled, Scott Einhorn singled and grounders by Brian Miller and Mitch Kaylor drove them home. In the bottom of the seventh, trailing 3-2, Sonora continued the rally with a hit by Rajcic and Stuart’s RBI single to right.

The teams traded runs in the eighth. Sonora’s clutch effort on singles by Miller and Thom Cruz again staved off the extinction of its hopes, tied it at 4-4 and forced another inning.

But the Raider pitching caved in during the ninth. Bird walked the first two batters and reliever Rajcic walked two more and hit another, forcing in two runs. A sacrifice fly by Paulk Bommersbach sent the final Brave run home.

Even so, Sonora didn’t fall without a fight, staging a two-out rally in the ninth. Stuart singled off reliever Bommersbach (8-3), who got credit for the victory, and Einhorn drove him home with a triple.

“This was a tough loss,” Blakeley said. “I’m disappointed right now and I probably will be for a few days, but we have a lot of good memories from this season. No matter what anybody else does, nobody will have a better record . . . and we went down like champions. We kept getting up off the floor and battling back.”