La Verne Just as Good as Advertised : Baseball: This time Cal Lutheran doesn’t come close as Leopards complete three-game playoff sweep.

Before the start of the NCAA baseball Division III West regionals, conventional wisdom had it that Cal Lutheran couldn’t beat La Verne.

Chalk one up for conventional wisdom.

La Verne, which won all 21 of its Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference games and came into the best-of-five series ranked fifth in the nation, completed a sweep of the Kingsmen by winning, 5-2 and 13-1, Friday at La Verne.

The Leopards (35-8), who qualified for the Division III World Series next week in Salem, Va., downed Cal Lutheran in the series opener, 6-5, on Thursday.

“We played hard,” Cal Lutheran senior John Becker said, “but we just couldn’t pull it out. They had the perfect season. I guess it was just meant to be for them and not for us.”

La Verne first baseman Jeff Polinsky, who earned the series most valuable player award with a nine-for-14 performance, agreed with Becker’s assessment.

“It would have been pretty bad for us to go 21-0 and then not make the World Series,” said Polinsky, who in the three games had seven runs batted in. “This was our year. They had some great years, but this was our year.”

For Cal Lutheran (23-15), one way to put the series in a positive light was to compare it to last year’s West regional loss to UC San Diego. Cal Lutheran blew a two-game lead in that series.

“I’d have to say losing a two-game lead is the most-painful thing that’s ever happened to me in baseball,” Cal Lutheran senior Kirk Fellows said. “When you get beat like this, you just got beat.”

There was little for the Kingsmen to second-guess themselves about from Friday’s games, with the exception of one disturbing statistic: Cal Lutheran left seven runners in scoring position in the first game, which was tight until La Verne scored two insurance runs in the ninth.

“They bent and bent and never broke,” Cal Lutheran Coach Marty Slimak said. “We could not kick the door in on them. That’s a tribute to their pitchers.”

La Verne’s Greg Vargas (9-1) pitched the first game and Jeff Doen (8-2) pitched the second. Each went all nine innings, as did the Leopards’ J.D. Romero on Thursday.

Cal Lutheran’s starters on Friday--Jesse Melgoza (4-3) in the first game and Andrew Barber (2-2) in the second--were pulled after six innings.

Melgoza left trailing, 3-2, and the Kingsmen had several chances to tie the score or take the lead in the late innings.

In the seventh, Sean Smith was at second with one out, but Travis Protzeller and Ray Arvizu each failed to drive him in.

In the eighth, Rich Holmes led off with a walk, but was caught stealing when Becker missed a pitch on a hit-and-run attempt. Becker singled, but pinch-hitter Gilbert Benitez struck out.

Fellows followed with a single up the middle, but pinch-hitter Chad Sixt struck out.

Fellows was the only Cal Lutheran player who hit well in all three games. He was seven for 12, including a mammoth home run that provided the Kingsmen’s only run in the series finale.

Fellows’ sixth home run pulled Cal Lutheran within 2-1 in the fourth, but La Verne broke the game open with four runs--three on Vargas’ first home run of the season--in the bottom of the fifth.

The Leopards pummeled Cal Lutheran’s bullpen for two runs in the seventh and five more in the eighth.

By then the Kingsmen seemed to have conceded the series. In the final two innings, the six Cal Lutheran batters were retired weakly.