Sanchez’s Home Run Celebration Worth the Wait

When Toby Sanchez of Rancho Santiago hit three home runs in a recent game against Golden West, he didn’t get that excited.

Although he became the first Rancho Santiago player to have three homers in a game, his reaction was muffled because Golden West won the March 26 game, 12-7.

“It wasn’t as exciting as it could have been,” said Sanchez, a freshman outfielder. “Some of my teammates said they would have been excited no matter how the team did. But we watched the tape of the game the other day and after my last home run I look like I had just struck out.”

But there was a far different scene when Sanchez crossed the plate after he hit his fourth home run in a 19-2 victory over Cero Coso Friday at Ventura College in the title game of the Channel Coast Tournament. He also had two triples, scored six runs and drove in 11.

“It was the biggest reaction I’ve ever had,” Sanchez said about his final home run. “I was like a kid in a candy store. I was yelling ‘Yea!’ and I had my fists pumping. The fans for both teams were standing. . . . It was like ‘Wow!’ You never know if it will happen again. If it doesn’t, who cares? I did it once.”

The performance left a Cerro Coso player wondering if he could get Sanchez’s autograph on a ball.

“It was without a doubt the best offensive game I’ve seen in all my association with the game,” Rancho Santiago Coach Don Sneddon said. “He has power, he demonstrates that in practice. But to hit four home runs in a game, that would be hard to do even if you were pitching underhand.”

The prelude to Sanchez’s record-setting day came the previous afternoon, when he took extra batting practice with Sneddon in a effort to work out a minor flaw in his swing.

Maybe the most impressive thing about Sanchez’s performance was that he hit the ball to different fields.

His first home run went over the 380-foot sign in left-center. His next went to the 380-foot sign in right-center. He went back to left-center for his third home run of the game.

Then Sanchez did something he can’t explain. Cerro Coso changed pitchers and he decided to change to a bat one inch longer than the 34 he normally uses. He said he was looking for whip in his bat.

His fourth at-bat resulted in a triple that hit near the top of the fence in right-center. He stayed with the longer bat and hit a triple off the left-center field fence in his fifth at-bat.

In his final at-bat, he went back to the 34-inch bat and drove the ball over the left-field fence for a home run. It was the 11th home run of the season for Sanchez, who leads the Orange Empire Conference.

Sanchez can’t fully explain his performance, but he has it in perspective.

“I think I’ll be OK,” he said. “I’ve always been the kind of person not to let anything get to my head. I always doubt myself. My family and friends will always keep me where I need to be. They will never let me lose sight of what’s important.”

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More power: Sanchez, who is about six feet and 220 pounds, had always shown an ability to drive the ball, but it wasn’t until the second half of his senior season at Mater Dei that he began to realize his talents.

One of the main reasons was that Sanchez started working with hitting coach and former Dodger Bill Sudakis, who taught him to use his lower body more. Sanchez has combined his new mechanics with a desire to excel.

He gets about 120 swings a day in practice, goes home to do his homework, then goes to the house of a friend who has a batting cage and continues to hit. He figures he gets close to 500 swings some days.

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Full-Nelson: Josh Nelson, Fullerton’s All-Mission Conference quarterback, has made a strong first impression at Mississippi. Nelson has moved into the No. 1 spot on the depth chart at the end of spring practice.

Nelson, from Servite High School, completed 14 of 16 passes for 181 yards as his Red team beat the Blue, 31-7, March 26 in the spring game.

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Off to the race: Fullerton (18-10) is in first place in the softball race with an 8-0 mark. The Hornets have seven shutouts in eight conference games.

Orange Coast (20-10-2, 7-2) is second, Riverside (12-14, 6-3) is third, Rancho Santiago (17-13, 5-3) fourth, Cypress (28-14, 4-5) and Saddleback (16-12, 4-5) are tied for fifth. Golden West (5-17, 0-7) is seventh and Irvine Valley (1-22, 0-9) is eighth.