Saugus’ Lights Were Out With Nobody Home

After Saugus High’s 11-inning, 4-3 loss to Palmdale on Tuesday mercifully ended with one of his players striking out with the bases loaded, Saugus Coach Doug Worley wondered if his batter even saw the Palmdale pitcher’s offering.

“I guess the game ended about 7 o’clock,” Worley said. “It was the darkest I’ve ever played, and I’ve been coaching about 20 years.”

Chris Paxton had led off the top of the 11th with a home run to give the Falcons the one-run lead. Worley’s team started a rally in the bottom of the inning, but midway through it, the coach didn’t care if his team won or lost.

“When the inning started, it was kind of that last little glow,” said Worley, describing the sunset.

“I talked to the ump before the inning and said, ‘I guess if you’re going to start the inning, you’re going to finish it.’ I was telling him if they score, I want us to have our chance to score too.

“But it was a long, involved (Saugus at-bat) and nothing happened. With us, it was nothing but full counts.”

MARMONTE LEAGUE

Nice Start

The good news for the Thousand Oaks baseball team is it can only get easier.

In their first two games of the season, the Lancers faced Monroe’s Joel Zamudio and El Camino Real’s Randy Wolf, two of the top pitchers in the area.

Thousand Oaks beat Zamudio, 2-1, capitalizing on his throwing error in the eighth inning, and the Lancers lost to Wolf, 4-2.

“It was quite a challenge,” Thousand Oaks Coach Jim Hansen said. “We knew their reputations. I think we did an outstanding job against them. Our kids are still talking about them.

“We feel really honored that we got to face both of them, because there are a lot of people who are wondering just how good they are.”

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The Thousand Oaks pitchers have performed well themselves, creating a nice problem for Hansen. Right-hander Tim Baron hasn’t given up an earned run in 15 innings, and left-hander Brian Downing has worked seven innings without yielding an earned run. Sophomore Micah Weathers also pitched six shutout innings in his varsity debut.

With two league games a week, Hansen will have to juggle to find enough innings for all three pitchers.

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Thousand Oaks misplayed balls on five consecutive batters Tuesday, but the Lancers gave up only two runs in the inning and still beat Cleveland, 7-2.

The fifth inning started with a fielding error by shortstop Matt Elam. The next batter bunted and the ball was misplayed by catcher Matt Kolkowski, but it was ruled a hit. Baron then fielded and threw away another bunt, third baseman Greg Aguilar threw away a ground ball, and Elam booted another.

That’s when Hansen came to the mound.

“We had a little meeting to regain our composure,” he said.

The next two batters popped up and the third grounded out.

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Simi Valley Coach Mike Scyphers responded just as you might expect when he was told Baseball America magazine had ranked the Pioneers sixth in the nation in its preseason poll.

“That’s unwarranted,” he said. “We’re young.”

Only three starters--Bill Scheffels, Ryan Hankins and Jeff Michael--are back from the 1993 team that finished 27-4 and was the Southern Section Division I runner-up.

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Newbury Park’s Keith Smith is off to a hot start. Smith is 3-0 with an 0.32 earned-run average. He also hit safely in seven of his first 14 at-bats and is now batting .473.

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Royal Coach Dan Maye expected that his pitching would be the strength and carry the offense, but so far it has been the opposite.

The Highlanders are batting .377, led by Adrian Mendoza (.550, 10 runs batted in), Joel Mellinger (.471, nine RBIs), Shawn Fossen (.444) and Phil Derryman (.429).

Oddly, the weakest position in the lineup has been the cleanup spot. Maki Kramer is batting only .294.

“I think our team, through the lineup, is hitting the ball better than most,” Maye said, “but our pitching is not where I want it to be.”

The Highlanders are yielding 6.8 runs a game.

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Don’t try to figure out the Channel Islands offense. The Raiders scored 15 runs in their first four games, and that included losses of 1-0 and 2-1, but then they scored 18 runs in one game against Oxnard. They followed up that performance with a 4-0 loss to Crescenta Valley.

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Luxury dugouts and a home clubhouse are under construction at Channel Islands, but red tape is standing in the way of completion.

Coach Al Tarazon expects the proper permits to be obtained and the project to be completed by May.

The home dugout will be 60 feet long and 10 feet deep, attached to a carpeted clubhouse with a refrigerator.

They’re calling it Tarazon’s Castle.

Around the Leagues . . .

* Hueneme’s Art Bolen is batting .555 with five RBIs, including the game-winning hits in the two Viking victories.

* Camarillo senior outfielder Robert Smith is batting .389 and already has nine stolen bases. He has been caught once and picked off once. The Scorpions have stolen 25 bases.

* Marmonte League teams have won all four baseball games against the Channel League by a combined score of 40-10.

* Harvard-Westlake freshman center Jason Collins set the school’s single-season rebound record this season with 258 in 27 games. Wolverine senior Scott Garson broke the career record for three-point baskets with 69.

Kennedy Cosgrove and staff writers Steve Elling, Jeff Fletcher, Irene Garcia, Dana Haddad, Michael Lazarus and Paige A. Leech contributed to this notebook.