Uninspired West Claims Its Regional Opener, 10-4 : Baseball: Coach Hornback put in foul mood despite victory in American Legion tournament.

Woodland Hills West Coach Don Hornback, who spent much of last weekend in bed with viral pneumonia, experienced that oh-so-familiar turn of the stomach again Wednesday afternoon.

His temperature was high, his complexion was pale and his temperament was borderline foul.

This particular malady, however, was contracted while watching his somewhat catatonic team defeat Murray, Utah, 10-4, in a first-round game of the American Legion Southwest regional tournament at Logan High.

“I don’t like that win at all,” Hornback said. “There was no intensity at all. We stunk up the joint.”

Infirmity or not, his olfactory sense seemed unaffected. Sure, West (36-6) advanced to a second-round game today against Kailua, Hawaii, in the double-elimination, eight-team tournament, but Utah banged out 14 hits and stranded 14 baserunners.

West right-hander Sean Boldt (10-1) didn’t fool many folks, surrendering all 14 hits, walking six and striking out none over eight innings. He freely admitted that he needed an altitude--or was it attitude?--adjustment. And according to Hornback, Boldt was not alone.

“I thought all they did up there (in Utah) was ski,” Boldt said. “I think I took them too lightly.”

West, which has won 30 of its past 31 games and 10 in a row, faces Hawaii at 4:35 this afternoon. Hawaii defeated Boulder, Colo., 4-0, Wednesday.

Although it finished with 13 hits, West didn’t seem to snap out of its self-induced coma until the fifth, when a pair of Utah errors led to two unearned runs and a 4-1 West lead.

Meanwhile, Boldt did his best bob-and-weave imitation, scattering seven hits and walking three over the first five innings. West failed to sustain momentum against right-hander Jeremy Cooper (7-1) until the seventh, the inning in which West broke the game open.

With West leading, 5-1, in the top of the seventh, Utah scored once and loaded the bases. Yet a surprisingly confident Boldt--who said he took a look at the score book between innings--retired Carson Winget on a lazy fly to right for the third out.

“I was looking between innings and I saw that (Winget) was 0 for two with a walk,” Boldt said, grinning. “I wasn’t getting anybody out, the whole team was hitting me, but I thought I could handle him again.”

For the record, Winget was one for three when he stepped in, but why ruin a good story with something as irrelevant as statistics?

West scored three times in the bottom of the seventh to blow it open. Del Marine grounded a one-out single to center and scored on Jason Cohen’s two-run homer to left, his third of the season. Cohen, who also knocked in a run with a ground ball in the eighth, has driven in 20 runs in West’s 15 postseason games. Gregg Sheren gave West an 8-2 lead with a run-scoring single to center.

Trailing, 10-2, entering the ninth, Utah finally chased Boldt, who gave up three hits and a walk and committed West’s lone error before he recorded an out. With two runs in and the bases loaded, right-hander Pat Treend--who is expected to start on Friday--relieved.

Treend said he hadn’t thrown a baseball in 10 days, having spent the last week vacationing at his brother’s house in Vancouver, Wash. But that’s not to say Treend--the winner of two games in the state tournament last week--didn’t get some work in.

“I threw a softball,” he said. “I played softball at my brother’s company picnic.”

You can bet Treend was playing hardball with Utah, though: He struck out the side to end the game.

West reached the double-figure mark in runs for the fourth consecutive game and has rolled up 54 runs in its past five games. Eight of the nine batters in West’s lineup had at least one hit and six players drove in runs. Other than Boldt’s bobble in the ninth, West played flawlessly in the field, turning two double plays.

Once he blew off a little steam, even Hornback had to admit things probably weren’t as bad as he first believed.

“I guess it’s a tribute to our team that we can play like that and still have a 10-4 win,” he said. “We did play pretty well defensively, and I was glad to see that.”

Boldt played well offensively. He led off the third with a ringing double to left-center, West’s first hit of the game, and scored on a single by Jeff Marks to tie the score, 1-1.

Boldt, who finished with a team-high three hits, drove in Chris Castillo with the go-ahead run in the fourth as West took a 2-1 lead. West never trailed thereafter.

“My hitting worked out pretty well,” Boldt said. “My pitching, well, all I had heard from everybody was how there weren’t any good teams at this tournament.

“From now on, I won’t be taking anybody lightly.”

His light-headed coach hopes the feeling’s contagious.