West Routed in First Game of State Event : Woodland Hills Pitchers Hurt by Errors, Fullerton Bats in a 13-4 Setback

Nestled here among the gently rolling vineyards of the Napa Valley is picturesque little Borman Field, site of the American Legion state baseball championships.

And what a day it was for baseball Saturday morning in this small town: bright, blue skies and near-perfect 70-degree temperatures. What else could the Woodland Hills West Legion team ask for? It had won 11 games in a row and had swept to the District 20 championship to earn the right to play Fullerton in a first-round game of this double-elimination tournament.

Nine innings later, however, the beauty of the setting was marred by pure ugliness on the diamond for Woodland Hills as it withered under an attack from Fullerton’s bats and chipped in with some poor defense en route to a 13-4 loss.

Woodland Hills committed four errors and then sat back as Fullerton’s lethal weapons knocked out 13 hits, including four home runs, to complement the complete-game, 13-strikeout effort of Steve Trachsel.

For a Woodland Hills team that was 27-3 entering the game and had won 21 of its past 22 games, an obvious question lingered: What happened?

“Everything was dead,” Woodland Hills Coach Gary Gibson said. “I don’t think we’ve had a game all year where we did so many things wrong.”

Representative of Woodland Hills’ woes was Ricky Banuelos. The normally sure-handed shortstop made three errors and, as the team’s leadoff batter (.395 average), struck out three times.

But the final score was not entirely the result of Woodland Hills’ miscues. Fullerton showed off an impressive corps of sluggers, rallying for six runs in the eighth inning to punctuate its dominance.

Still, Woodland Hills starting pitcher Lance Gibson (9-2) had pitched well in his six innings, striking out eight and allowing two earned runs before leaving the game with his team trailing, 5-1.

Gibson the coach--who is also Lance’s father--had figured that the game was over at that point.

“We were down, 5-1, we had no defense, we had no hitting,” the elder Gibson said. “If Lance is going to come back (later in the tournament) why waste him?”

But while the game may have seemed over in the seventh, the fireworks surely were not. The crowning blow came in the eighth, with Woodland Hills reliever Sean Boldt on the mound. With runners at second and third, Woodland Hills elected to walk No. 3 batter Tom Wilson, who had hit a solo home run in the third, to get to No. 4 batter Matt Carter, who also had homered earlier.

Not to be shown up, Carter drilled Boldt’s fourth offering off the flag pole in dead center for a grand slam, giving him six runs batted in on the day.

Two batters later, Fullerton’s Tho Nguyen hit a two-run homer into the vineyards for a 13-1 lead. And talk about your taters--the American Legion was awarding a case of sweet potatoes to each player who homered, to be delivered to their home 10 days before Thanksgiving.

All Woodland Hills had to be thankful for on this day was Ryan McGuire, who drove in all four runs with a pair of potato-producing shots of his own, his sixth and seventh home runs of the year.

“Ryan had a great game today,” Gibson said. “If the other kids had played half the game that Ryan did, we’d be in the winners’ bracket.”

Instead, Woodland Hills is in the losers’ bracket, but it still has a chance to win the tournament. It will play Long Beach, a 16-0 loser to San Leandro on Saturday, at 9:30 this morning.

“We’ll be here (this morning),” Gibson warned, “and we’re going to win.”