3-A Final Too Much of a Weird Thing : Score--19-14--Only One of the Odd Numbers as Mt. Carmel Wins

What happened Thursday at the University of San Diego’s Cunningham Stadium in front of about 1,600 astounded fans was a walk-marred, battle-scarred affair that will take its place--however bashfully--under the 3-A baseball championship section in the San Diego Section record book.

People who read that book in years to come will see this 1989 score: Mt. Carmel 19, Helix 14.

And they will wonder, 19-14?

This was championship baseball: The game’s first four runs were forced in by bases-loaded walks--two for each side. Each starting pitcher--Mt. Carmel’s Byron Klemaske and Helix’s Rob Ippolito--walked three batters in the first inning. There were 15 walks in the game, with Klemaske and winner Doug Hill (9-0) combining to walk 10--five in the first three innings.

And this was championship baseball: Ten errors, five by each team. A scorecard that was more difficult to read than your average 1040 tax form.

And this, too, was championship baseball: A fourth-inning bench-clearing brawl that delayed the game for 15 minutes and resulted in six ejections, a few welts and bloodstains, but no serious injuries.

Helix (24-6) lost just one starter--catcher Chad Young--and two reserves. Mt. Carmel (26-2) lost three starters--shortstop John Tejcek, right fielder A.J. Forlano and center fielder Joe Plewak.

“It was kind of out of control,” said Tejcek who, by most accounts, was playing the role of peacemaker.

“This game was a joke,” Klemaske said. “There were some great plays and stuff, but it was out of hand.”

It took two hours to play the first four innings. As afternoon crept into early evening and already cloudy skies became darker, just one thing came to mind: this wasn’t the kind of game that should be called on account of darkness. It was the kind of game that should have been played under the cover of darkness.

“This was nothing like we expected,” Mt. Carmel Coach Sam Blalock said. “We had it duped out at about 5-2--with us winning, of course.”

Mt. Carmel banged out 24 hits, 17 of them coming in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings. The Sundevils scored 15 runs in those three innings, and another in the seventh, after which they had a 19-9 lead. Helix answered with five hits and five runs in the bottom of the seventh before the end.

“Good hitting or bad pitching, I don’t know,” said Mt. Carmel assistant Shell Scott, who was ejected in a brawl in 1982 in the previous Mt. Carmel-Helix 3-A title game.

Ippolito (11-3) gave way to Eric West in the fourth with the score 9-3, and West left in the fifth with this sobering statistic: He pitched to seven batters and allowed seven singles. The only thing that saved him from still being on that mound was that he got two outs because of his sneaky pick-off move.

It was his first pick-off move that led to the brawl. He had Tejcek picked off first, but Helix first baseman Jason Ledford saw Plewak galloping toward home from third while Tejcek was hung up between first and second. So Ledford threw home in time to get Plewak, who slid hard into Young.

An inning earlier, Sean Robinson had barrelled into Young, and Helix Coach Jerry Schniepp argued that according to the high school rule that players must try to avoid contact.