CSUN Wins After Ball Disappears : Matadors: A fast one by Highlander pitcher takes a wild bounce, lands on a fence and two CSUN runners score.

Call it a new wrinkle on the old hidden-ball trick.

Now you see it, now you don’t. The UC Riverside lead, like the baseball, also disappeared into thin air.

Cal State Northridge scored twice in the bottom of the eighth inning on a wacky, one-in-a-million play to pull out a 10-9 victory over UC Riverside in a nonconference game Sunday at Matador Field.

With two out, Northridge runners at second and third and Riverside holding a one-run lead in the eighth, reliever Scott Tebbets fired a pitch over the head of catcher Scott Emmons. For several endless moments, indecision reigned supreme.

Jason Shanahan scored easily from third on the wild pitch to tie the score, 9-9. Eric Gillespie, on second base a heartbeat earlier, never stopped running and cruised home with the decisive run.

Behind home plate, everyone was searching frantically for the baseball. Gillespie scored amid the considerable confusion. Pitcher, catcher, umpire, batter. No ball.

It was only a celebration for the Matadors. The ball, somehow, glanced off the backstop screen, dropped straight down and came to rest atop a four-foot-tall wooden support fence at the backstop’s base.

Emmons eventually located the ball and immediately claimed that Gillespie should be sent back to third since the ball was wedged between the screen and the support railing.

Plate umpire Martin Abruscato grabbed Emmons and stopped him from touching the ball until he’d eyeballed the scene. Abruscato calmly plucked the ball from the screen with a thumb and forefinger, ruled that it wasn’t lodged and therefore was in play, and allowed Gillespie’s run to stand.

Reliever Aaron D’Aoust (1-0) retired the final four Highlanders to earn the win.

Northridge blew a comfortable lead in the top of the eighth when Juan Velazquez gave up three home runs in the inning as Riverside (0-2) scored seven times to take a 9-8 lead.