Conejo Takes Slap at Umpire Over High-Five : Baseball: American Legion team still smarting a day after a controversial call helps knock it from the state tournament.

In retrospect, the Conejo team’s celebration in the state American Legion baseball playoffs just started a little too soon.

High-fives at game’s end weren’t needed after all. In fact, high-fives in the middle innings weren’t needed, either. Therein lay the problem.

Conejo’s season-ending, 7-6 loss to Union City on Monday was filled with both pain and pay-back. But no play was more pivotal than the one in which a Conejo run was taken off the scoreboard in the sixth inning.

“How big was that play?” Conejo Coach Craig Sturges asked, rhetorically. “I’ll tell you. It was biiiiig.”

With two out and runners at first and second in the sixth, Brian Sturges drove a high fly ball off the fence in left field. Lead runner Ryan Kritscher scored easily but trail runner Jeff Olin slowed as he approached third, thinking the ball had cleared the fence for a home run.

Not a bad assumption, considering that Sturges had hit three home runs in three previous tournament games. In this case, though, Olin and third-base Coach Mike Herman celebrated too soon. Sturges’ hit never left the field, bouncing off the fence for a double, and, in this case, that spelled double trouble.

As Olin rounded third, he exchanged a high-five with Herman, who realized a split-second later that the ball had not cleared the fence after all. Olin, too, recognized the danger, bolted into high gear and scored in a cloud of dust.

A cloud of controversy ensued.

Olin’s run was disallowed and Conejo settled for a 5-5 tie instead of a 6-5 lead. Olin was called out because Herman interfered with him while the ball was in play.

“I thought it was a home run,” Herman said. “When I saw that the throw was coming in, I started waving (Olin) home again.”

Herman argued that the plate umpire, who claimed to have seen the illegal contact between Herman and Olin, did not make the ruling until the contact was protested by the Union City bench. Indeed, several moments passed before Olin, who was sprawled at home plate in pain after colliding with catcher Jeff Ridenour, was ruled out.

“If he had the call all the way, why did he wait so long to call it?” Herman said.

In a tournament game characterized by strange plays, the high-five controversy was not unique. As has been its pattern all season, Conejo (40-6) was on the giving and receiving end of many other strange plays.

To wit:

* In the seventh, Brent Christenson also was tossed out at the plate. He opened the inning with a towering shot off the fence in right-center and sped into third. When the relay throw skipped past third base, he sped for home and was tossed out, despite a collision with Ridenour.

* In the top of the sixth, right fielder Christenson and third baseman Mike Moore dropped fly balls, leading to two unearned runs. Catcher David Skeels also dropped a perfect Christenson throw to the plate in the inning, allowing a runner to score from third on a sacrifice fly.

* There were two other defensive plays that defied explanation.

Trailing, 2-1, in the third, Conejo scored two runs on Christenson’s double to right-center. The relay to Ridenour arrived in plenty of time to nail the trail runner, Sturges, but Ridenour inexplicably did not attempt to make the tag. Instead, he fired to third base, where Christenson was tagged out while attempting to take the extra base.

Christenson, who would later be thrown out on an 8-6-5-2 relay play at the plate, was out, 8-6-2-5.

Similarly, in the first, Conejo made a mental mistake on defense. With Union City runners at first and second and one out, a grounder was hit near the bag at third. Moore gloved the ball near the line but did not attempt to step on third base--just a foot or so away--before firing to first.

Instead of a possible inning-ending double-play, Conejo pitcher Bryan Corey got nothing on the play: Moore’s throw to first was in the dirt for an error. Two unearned runs scored in the inning.

* Perhaps Corey, the losing pitcher after allowing two earned runs in 8 1/3 innings, should have known something weird was afoot after one batter.

Union City leadoff batter Jeff Borges started the game by sending a dribbler off the end of the bat into the hole at short for an infield hit.

Borges hit the ball so poorly off the capped portion of his bat that the cover of the ball was sliced. It was tossed out of play. Nine innings later, so was Conejo.

AMERICAN LEGION NOTEBOOK: C8