Woodland Hills Leads Fullerton After Darkness Suspends Game

Woodland Hills catcher Derek Stark vowed this week to settle all disputes on the playing field.

“We’ll comment in Yountville with our bats,” he said during a week of protests and court orders in which Woodland Hills and Camarillo jockeyed for a position in the American Legion state playoffs.

Woodland Hills, which defeated Camarillo in the Sixth Area tournament, reached the playoffs only after winning a court injunction. On Friday, Camarillo decided not to contest the team’s entry. Camarillo contended Woodland Hills was ineligible for the double-eliminaton tournament because of a roster violation and had threatened legal action of its own to block Woodland Hills from playing.

With the legal issues decided, Stark started the comments with his bat.

Stark had four runs batted in, on a two-run home run and a two-run single, to give Woodland Hills (35-6) a 9-4 lead over Fullerton (29-5) after eight innings Saturday at Borman Field in Yountville. Umpires suspended the game because of darkness as the ninth inning was about to begin.

The game will resume today at 9 a.m., but that didn’t seem to bother Stark, even though it means Woodland Hills must play two games on the same day.

“It doesn’t matter,” Stark said. “We’ll just win in the morning and go back and bag some z’s.”

The catcher’s third-inning home run would have awakened anybody. It easily cleared the 364-foot sign in center field and gave Woodland Hills a 3-0 lead. Chris Billig followed with a solo shot in the fourth, making it 4-0.

The home runs earned each player two liters of soda pop and 40 pounds of sweet potatoes for this Thanksgiving. That’s the American Legion’s way of rewarding anybody showing such power in the tournament.

But Stark has more on his mind than sweet potatoes.

“We’ve got a long road ahead,” he said. “I think we have a lot to prove, and by the end, we’ll have proved an awful lot.”

Woodland Hills starting pitcher Pablo Suarez, who is 11-0 and had an earned-run average below 0.87 before the playoffs, carried a no-hitter and a 4-0 lead into the fifth. But Fullerton scored three runs, all with two out.

Two runs came home on David Wackerman’s double into the left-center alley. Wackerman then scored when Suarez struck out Adrian Schicker for the apparent third out. But Schicker swung at a wild pitch, the ball caroming off the backstop. Wackerman, running with the pitch, scored from second.

Fullerton tied the game in the sixth on a leadoff double by Rod Turner, who was sacrificed to third and scored on an error by Woodland Hills third baseman Scott Campbell.

Woodland Hills built a five-run lead in the seventh inning. Ray Sabado and Campbell started the inning with a pair of infield singles and scored on Stark’s single. After Adam Schulhofer was hit by a pitch, Billig scored Stark with a single. After a forceout, Suarez hit a two-run single to give Woodland Hills a 9-4 lead.

Through eight innings, Suarez has allowed four runs on four hits. Woodland Hills has amassed 18 hits off three Fullerton pitchers.

In earlier games, Sacramento beat Lodi, 7-6, and San Mateo defeated El Segundo, 15-5.

After the Woodland Hills-Fullerton game is finished today, Lodi will play that game’s loser. Sacramento and El Segundo will play at 1 p.m. and San Mateo will play the winner of the suspended game.