San Marino Baseball Team Makes Most of a Second Chance : Preps: Titans beat El Segundo, 5-4, to win CIF Southern Section 2-A Division title. The Eagles defeated San Marino to win championship in 1989.

Since losing the CIF Southern Section 2-A Division baseball championship game a year ago, the San Marino High Titans had been dogged by the memory of a contest that they felt they should have won. San Marino committed four errors that led to five unearned runs in a 7-4 loss to El Segundo.

“I felt our team was better than they were and we just didn’t play a good defensive game and that always costs you,” Coach Mickey McNamee said.

San Marino was able to transform its frustration into inspiration this season.

On Saturday, the Titans defeated the Eagles, 5-4, at Anaheim Stadium to win their first championship since they won the 1-A title in 1984.

San Marino was the only San Gabriel Valley team to win a championship. South Hills lost to San Luis Obispo, 4-0, in the 4-A title game, and Diamond Bar was defeated by Marina, 6-4, in the 5-A final.

With several top players returning from last year’s squad, McNamee said getting back to the 2-A final was the team’s goal.

“The thing that made this rather special was that they set a goal pretty early in the season that they wanted to get back to the finals and deep down they wanted to play El Segundo again,” he said.

For Dan Giddings, the losing pitcher in last year’s game, thoughts of a championship rematch started moments after El Segundo players began to celebrate last year’s victory.

“For the whole year, from the day we lost that game, all I ever thought about was winning the league,” he said. “But that wasn’t as important to me as getting back to the CIF championship and playing El Segundo.”

Outfielder Mark Ukropina said: “We had a couple of goals. We wanted to win as many games as we could and win the (Rio Hondo) league title. We also wanted to get back to the CIF (playoffs) and get in the opposite bracket as El Segundo.”

El Segundo was ranked No. 1 and San Marino was ranked No. 2 in the preseason poll.

In the playoffs, San Marino beat Orange Lutheran, 3-2, Atascadero, 12-4, and Yucaipa, 2-1. El Segundo defeated Santa Clara, 9-5, Valley Christian, 21-11, and St. Anthony, 7-1.

“We really wanted to face them again,” outfielder Alfonso Montoya said. “Right after we beat Yucaipa, the first thing we wanted to see was if we were going to play El Segundo again.”

Said second baseman Craig Milias: “We knew they’d (El Segundo) have an easy draw after they got there and we were just glad to be there, too. After we beat Yucaipa, we were just glad El Segundo beat St. Anthony. If St. Anthony had won it would have been a lot harder to play them.”

San Marino fell behind, 2-0, entering the top of the sixth inning.

“The thing I said to the kids--even in the fifth inning--was (El Segundo pitcher Tate) Seefried wasn’t getting us out,” McNamee said. “We were getting ourselves out. We were swinging at too many bad pitches.”

Giddings said: “I knew they were going to get their hits and score some runs. I expected that, but I didn’t want them to get out to a big lead. When they didn’t, I knew we could come back. They weren’t used to playing close games. They really crushed some teams to get here, but when they played us we were up to the challenge and they couldn’t handle it.”

The Titans went ahead with five consecutive hits that produced four runs in the top of the sixth. San Marino added a run in the seventh. El Segundo scored a run in the bottom of the sixth and seventh, but failed to come up with the big hit to tie the score.

Ukropina had two hits and three runs batted in. He entered the championship with a .475 average, five home runs and 43 RBIs.

“Mark Ukropina just had an incredible season and he finished it off the way you would have expected him to,” McNamee said. “In my opinion, he has to be the 2-A player of the year. If he’s not the 2-A player of the year, there has to be an investigation.”

McNamee also credited the team’s one-two pitching combination of Giddings and Michael Wan. Giddings finished 7-1 and Wan, who pitched in the team’s semifinal victory over Yucaipa, was 11-0. Wan is 19-1 the past two seasons.

“He had a sensational season,” McNamee said of Wan. “Without him, we wouldn’t have gotten there (to the final).”

The coach was especially pleased with the performance of Giddings in the final.

“We didn’t give him a lot of help last year and he had an ankle and shoulder injury (this season) and we took him along real slow,” McNamee said. “But we knew we’d need it from him in the playoffs and he really came through.”

Giddings said he couldn’t have imagined a better ending.

“It’s like a perfect culmination to my career,” he said. “I didn’t just look at it as my final high school game, but it was my final game with these guys and that’s what made it special. I’ve grown up with these guys and we’ve been playing together for a long time. To end it on the field like this was just a special feeling.”

The Titans have reached the CIF playoffs in 18 of the past 20 years. McNamee has coached San Marino for 27 years.

“There’s a strong tradition of baseball success and we’ve worked hard to build that,” he said. “But it’s not just this year. . . . You don’t have that kind of success by accident. We work very hard at it.”

McNamee, who is also the school’s athletic director, said that the baseball title marked the 50th championship that the school’s athletic program has won.