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Solar Breaks His Slump With Game-Winning Hit for CSUN

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

There are times when a baseball thrown at 85 m.p.h can look as big as a beach ball to a hitter on a tear.

There are other times when the same pitch could be as difficult to find as a grain of sand. For Mike Solar, the past week has been one of those times.

As the Cal State Northridge shortstop stepped to the plate in the eighth inning of Friday’s game against Cal State Fullerton, he was hitless in his previous 16 at-bats.

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How was the ball looking lately? “Kind of like a pea,” he would say later.

Nevertheless, at a time Northridge needed it most, Solar slapped a single through the left side of the infield for the key hit in the Matadors’ 4-3 nonconference win at Amergie Park in Fullerton.

Solar’s one-out single was the third of Northridge’s four hits in a three-run eighth inning and helped the Matadors move into a 3-3 tie.

Scott Sharts and Eric Johnson, who were on first and second after singling, both scored after left fielder David Ayala, a late-inning defensive replacement, allowed Solar’s single to slip under his glove.

Solar advanced to second base and scored the winning run when Scott Richardson bounced the first pitch thrown by reliever Dan Naulty up the middle for a single.

“That was a real mess, a real ugly deal,” said Northridge Coach Bill Kernen, whose team improved to 7-4. “Everybody just kind of gave things to one another today. We just happened to end up a run up.”

Indeed, a throwing error by Sharts set the table for Fullerton’s three runs, all of which came in the sixth inning and gave the Titans a 3-0 lead.

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Sharts, CSUN’s starting pitcher in the first game of a three-game series, fielded a bunt by Mike Berry, pivoted toward third in an attempt to get Jim Betzsold on a force play, and instead threw the ball down the left-field line.

Betzsold, who led off the inning with a walk, came around to score on the play, giving Fullerton a 1-0 lead. Frank Herman, who had singled, stopped at second with Berry holding at first.

After a passed ball by Mike Sims moved the runners along, Phil Nevin scored them both by driving a double up the left-center field gap.

Sharts (3-0), who pitched his second complete game, shut off the rally there by retiring the next three batters in order.

He pitched out of minijams in the final three innings.

“He didn’t have his real good stuff today, but he gutted it out and made some good pitches when he had to,” Kernen said.

James Popoff took the loss for Fullerton (3-7), which had won two of its previous three games.

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Northridge, which outhit Fullerton, 13-8, began to chip away at the lead in the seventh. With one out, Sims singled and Andy Hodgins, the No. 9-place hitter, drove him home with a opposite-field double to right-center for CSUN’s first run.

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