Cal Lutheran, Master’s Fall in Baseball

Two teams whose pitching staffs are long on innings and short on rest will collide in a second-round game of the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics District 3 baseball tournament at Azusa Pacific University today.

Cal Lutheran and The Master’s College, which split four meetings during the regular season, will play at 9:30 a.m. Both teams lost first-round games Thursday at Azusa Pacific.

Cal Lutheran (28-14), the No. 3-seeded team in the four-team double-elimination tournament, fell to No. 2 Cal Baptist, 10-2, and No. 1 Azusa Pacific defeated No 4 Master’s, 11-5.

The Cal Lutheran-Master’s winner will play the loser of the Cal Baptist-Azusa Pacific game (scheduled for 12:30 p.m.) at 3 this afternoon. The loser’s season will be over.

“Looks like we’re going to have to do it the hard way,” Cal Lutheran Coach Rich Hill said after watching Cal Baptist blow open a tight game with a seven-run seventh inning. “We didn’t play poorly. They just hit the ball well and (Rodney) Gaines was just nails.”

Gaines, an All-District 3 pitcher, held Cal Lutheran to seven hits, struck out 10 and walked only one while raising his record to 10-3.

“I felt good,” Gaines said. “They’re a good hitting club, but my slider was working well and I threw in the fastball to keep them off balance.”

Trailing, 3-0, after three innings, Cal Lutheran narrowed the deficit to one run on Leonard Matsumoto’s two-run double in the fourth. Thereafter, however, Gaines gave up only two hits, none after the fifth.

“His pitches were dropping off the table,” Hill said. “You’ve got to give him a lot of credit. We had him in trouble in the fourth, but he buckled down and worked his way out of it.”

After Matsumoto went to third on a wild pitch with none out, Gaines struck out Tim Lewis, Darnell Mitchell and Bryan Lovelace to end the inning.

Lewis went down swinging on three pitches, and Mitchell and Lovelace looked at called third strikes.

The score remained 3-2 until the bottom of the seventh when Cal Baptist knocked Kingsmen ace Mike Clark out of the game.

Having scattered six hits in the first six innings, Clark (6-2) gave up four consecutive hits and an intentional walk in the seventh before being replaced.

Richard Douge hit his 11th home run to begin the inning, and Jay Ulibari, Darin Burton and Ric Slagle followed with singles.

Slagle’s hit drove in Ulibari for a 5-2 Cal Baptist lead. Hill’s decision to intentionally walk Scott Mailing, who had hit his 19th home run in the first, appeared to be sound after Cal Lutheran reliever Kevin O’Neill struck out Tim Lopez and Greg Chizek was ruled out for batter interference.

But O’Neill hit pinch-hitter Chris Allen with a pitch to force in a run, and Rudy Gomez, a 5-foot-10, 155-pound junior shortstop, hit a grand slam to put the game away.

Azusa Pacific 11, Master’s 5--The Mustangs trailed, 5-0, after two innings, and 10-2, after four. Starter John March (1-7) was tagged for five runs in 2 1/3 innings.

Master’s had 14 hits, but Jose Gallardo (11-1) stayed out of trouble until the ninth when he was relieved by Andy Lopez after giving up two singles and a triple.