Southern Section Baseball Playoffs : 4-A : El Dorado Falls to Fontana’s Fortunes

This might be a good time for Fontana High School Coach Steve Hernandez to invest in a few dozen lottery tickets. Maybe he should run off to Vegas for a few throws of the dice or pulls of the slot machine.

Lady Luck has been smiling flirtatiously at Hernandez and his baseball team the last couple of weeks. On Tuesday, she came to Fullerton to make her big move.

She brought with her enough good fortune to give Fontana a 1-0 win over El Dorado and a place in the Southern Section 4-A championship game Saturday night at Dodger Stadium. More than 500 spectators at Fullerton College saw the Steelers score an unearned run in the top of the seventh to hand El Dorado ace Scott Holcomb his first defeat of the season, and leave Golden Hawk Coach Steve Gullotti to wax philosophically.

“Fontana was meant to win this game . . . no matter what we did,” Gullotti said. “That’s just the way baseball is.”

The game’s only run came after a throwing error by El Dorado third baseman Doug Yates. “That’s probably the first throwing error he’s made all year long,” Gullotti said.

Ernie Lujan led off the top of the seventh by hitting a high chopper near the third-base bag. Yates fielded the ball and threw it over the head of first baseman Rob Sporrer. Lujan took second on the overthrow and was replaced by pinch-runner Jose Larraga. Larraga advanced when a Holcomb pitch escaped the grasp of Golden Hawk catcher Doug Sipple. Said Gullotti: “Our catcher’s been a rock all year long.”

Charlie Solano fell behind Holcomb, 1-2, before hitting a grounder up the middle of a drawn-in infield, scoring Larraga. It was one of only three hits off of Holcomb, who struck out nine and walked two in 6 innings.

El Dorado (22-7) had runners on first and second with two outs in the bottom of the second, but Fontana starter Vinnie Mares got Shawn Blankenship on a fly out to center field to end the game. Mares (10-3) was hardly overpowering. He gave up six hits, but none of them came when El Dorado needed them most. The Golden Hawks stranded runners at first and second in the first inning and left the bases loaded in the fourth.

In the sixth, Yates came within inches of giving El Dorado a 1-0 lead. With two outs, he sent a Mares pitch deep to left field, where Fontana’s Mike McClellan went back and pulled it out of the ivy that lines the outfield fence.

“It was at the top of the fence,” McClellan said. “You’ll never believe this, but before that play, I was thinking about going back and making a catch against the fence. It just kept fading and fading. I think it would have gone out.

“Somebody out there wants us to win, I know that much.”

Gullotti thought the ball had a good chance of going out. “The wind blows out here,” he said. “I’ve seen balls hit like that go out here before, but not today. For them, maybe, but not for us.”

It sounds a little like sour grapes, but even Hernandez admits to the fling he is having with Lady Luck. The Steelers (19-7) were the third-place representative from the Citrus Belt League and were not expected to get into Dodger Stadium Saturday without buying a ticket. Playoff wins over Nogales (3-0), Arcadia (2-1), Lakewood (7-5) and El Dorado have put them into the championship game against Esperanza.

“You wanna pinch me to see if I’m still alive,” Hernandez asked reporters afterward. “There’s that old saying, ‘I’d rather be lucky than good.’ We’ve beaten some good teams in the playoffs, but we’ve gotta feel lucky to be a third-place team and be in the finals.”