Kennedy’s Cizek Gets His Way in 8-2 Victory

Mitch Cizek truly believes that he has developed a knack for the knuckleball. Given his druthers, the senior right-hander at Kennedy High would like to throw it 30 times a game, especially on days when his curve won’t and his fastball isn’t.

“It’s definitely my best pitch,” Cizek said. “I’d like to throw it more often.”

His coach, Manny Alvarado, doesn’t necessarily concur. It seems that every time Alvarado agrees to let Cizek try one, it fast becomes a case of knuck and duck.

“ He likes it, but I don’t,” said Alvarado, who calls the pitches from the dugout. “There are too many times when his knuckler doesn’t knuck.”

And though his knuckleball sometimes had all the movement of a tectonic plate Thursday, Cizek found the strike zone often enough with his other offerings to lead Kennedy to an 8-2 win over Taft in a Northwest Valley Conference game at Kennedy.

Cizek (6-2), who won his sixth consecutive game, pitched a five-hitter and allowed one earned run. He struck out five, walked seven and threw 119 pitches. He may have been just wild enough to keep the Taft batters off balance.

Of the eight baserunners Taft stranded--Taft also hit into two double plays--the three left high and dry in the sixth were the most crucial. With Kennedy holding a 5-1 lead, Taft’s Glen Nahmias led off the sixth with a home run to left. With one out, Doug Kougher singled, and with two out, Cizek walked Rich Cosentino and Rich Shapiro to load the bases.

With the Kennedy bullpen in action, Alvarado made a trip to the mound but decided to let Cizek remain in the game. Cizek struck out Brett Reisner with a curve on a 1-and-2 pitch.

“I think he knows better than to take me out,” Cizek said, grinning. “He knows by now that I can finish what I start.”

On this point the two agree: Cizek has six complete games in nine starts and Alvarado concedes that Cizek is a better bet to clean up his messes that any reliever.

“Mitch is a very, very strong kid,” Alvarado said. “I was looking more to see if he’d lost his composure than if he’d lost his stuff.”

In essence, Taft (10-9, 6-4 in league play) was finished after one inning. Kennedy used a walk and consecutive singles to left from Gino Tagliaferri, Travis Bourne, Pat DeBoer and Danny Gugler to build a 3-0 lead.

After Cizek wriggled off the hook in the sixth, the Golden Cougars (14-5, 8-2) added three runs in the bottom of the inning, including a two-run home run by Tagliaferri--his sixth of the season and 16th in his three-year career.