High School Baseball Roundup : Mira Mesa Errs Less Than Madison for Victory

For all the wrong reasons, you could tell Wednesday’s Mira Mesa-Madison City Eastern League game was a big one. Errors were popping up like land mines all over the field.

First-place Mira Mesa and second-place Madison combined for eight, plus a handful of wild pitches and a couple of passed balls.

By the time the dust had cleared--and there was a lot of it--Mira Mesa walked away with an 8-3 victory.

After the second inning, each team had two errors. The gaffes stopped there for Mira Mesa, but host Madison went on to collect four more--three by shortstop Terry Magnett.

“Mentally we played our worst game in a long, long time,” Mira Mesa Coach Mike Prosser said.

It could have been Madison’s day, but instead it was kid’s day. Mira Mesa’s top two pitchers, Travis Arnold and Eric Martinez, spent the afternoon watching the game from the bleachers. Arnold (6-1) has the chicken pox; Martinez (3-1) is academically ineligible and not expected back for two weeks.

So Prosser went with sophomore Marc Nielson. And after Nielson, a right-hander who had a pinched nerve in his left shoulder, allowed three runs in the second inning, Prosser went with sophomore Mike Bovee, who made his first pitching appearance.

Trailing, 2-0, Madison scored three runs off Nielson in the bottom of the second with three walks, Pete Valdez’s triple, Lamont Allen’s bunt single and Albert Mendiola’s ground ball, which bounced off second baseman Rickey Hastey’s glove.

Hastey, batting more than .400 this season, redeemed himself with four runs batted in on a three-for-four day at the plate.

Mira Mesa (15-2, 7-0) tied it in the fourth when Josh Green, two weeks removed from the junior varsity, scored on an error by right fielder Mike Jones. The Marauders went ahead, 4-3, in the fifth when Beau Champoux was hit by a pitch and scored on Magnett’s second error.

Madison is 13-5, 4-2.