Palmdale Is Worked Over by Holiday : High school baseball: Antelope Valley freshman cleans up during and after 4-1 victory.

After Antelope Valley High pitcher Jeremy Holiday shut down Golden League-leading Palmdale on three hits Friday, his real work began.

Holiday is a freshman, so after every game he is saddled with the tedious tasks of watering the field, raking the mound and emptying the water cooler.

Antelope Valley Coach Ed T’Sas watched his star pitcher dump the leftover water out of the bucket while Holiday’s teammates joked and yelled in the dugout.

“You just won the game and you’ve still got all those little duties,” he said. “Isn’t it great?”

Holiday smiled. Life didn’t seem such a chore after the crucial 4-1 victory.

Palmdale had to swallow a bitter pill, though. Its ace, senior David Glick--who was all but unhittable in his previous three starts--surrendered three runs in the first inning.

That was enough for Antelope Valley because the Falcon hitters took a collective vacation against Holiday, making his second start of the season and first in league play. And so the Antelopes (9-9, 8-4 in league play), who have three league games remaining, moved to within one-half game of Palmdale (16-6, 9-4) in the league standings.

“The kid pitched good,” Palmdale Coach Kent Bothwell said. “We didn’t swing the bat well and we have to give him part of the credit.”

Palmdale’s only breakthrough came in the third inning, when shortstop Jerome Payton’s two-out double drove in Kevin Habeger. But Holiday (5-2) minimized the damage by inducing Bob Harmon to fly out to end the inning.

Palmdale didn’t advance a runner past first base the remainder of the game.

“I was a little nervous at first, but once I got through the first inning I felt like it was going to be a really good game for us,” Holiday said. “I felt like we were really going to take it to them.”

He was right. Palmdale’s Glick (7-2) struck out 44 batters in his previous three starts--all one-sided victories--including 13 on Tuesday when he pitched a one-hitter against Ridgecrest Burroughs.

Bothwell hoped to get three solid innings from Glick (the weekly limit for innings pitched is 10) against Antelope Valley. But in the first inning, Glick gave up run-scoring single to Marcus Armstrong and a two-run double to Charlie Cooke.

“He’s been doing it all year,” Bothwell said of the powerful left-hander. “Normally, he can rebound pretty quickly, but he didn’t quite have his good stuff today. He just wasn’t as sharp.”

He didn’t throw as hard as when well-rested, either. A scout timed Glick at 84 miles per hour on a radar gun Friday, about three to four m.p.h. slower than usual, he said.

Glick recorded eight of his nine outs on strikeouts, but gave up six hits, four runs and two walks.

Holiday, in contrast, didn’t blow anyone away. He simply threw his sneaky fastball and accurate curve to win the game.

“For him to come through like that, it’s a really big victory for him,” T’Sas said. “And for the team.”