Historic Season Ends When Santa Paula Can’t Find Way Home

If not for two bang-bang plays at the plate, Santa Paula High’s historic baseball season might still have life.

The Cardinals, who have won only one league baseball title in the past 41 years, bagged their first postseason victory since 1940 when they knocked off Cabrillo, 2-1, in the first round of this year’s Southern Section Division IV playoffs.

Three days later, before one of the largest home crowds anyone in town can remember, Santa Paula lost to Mountain View, 2-1, after two Cardinal runners were thrown out at the plate in the fifth inning.

“That was a heartbreaking loss,” junior infielder Paz Olson-Pacheco said. “I’d rather lose by a million than by one.”

It was a wild fifth inning that the Cardinals will rehash in the off-season.

With one out and runners on second and third and Santa Paula trailing, 1-0, Coach Henry Jacinto flashed the suicide squeeze sign to Jeremy Johnson, the No. 9 hitter and the team’s best bunter. On the first pitch, Johnson bunted the ball on one hop to the pitcher who threw out Clayton Alamillo at the plate.

After the Cardinals pulled a successful double steal that scored Robert Zavala and sent Johnson to second, Willie Zavala singled sharply to left.

Johnson, the team’s fastest runner, never hesitated rounding third but a perfect throw nailed him.

“Both runners slid under the catcher and we thought both were safe,” Jacinto said. “We really argued the second call but both the home-plate and first-base umps said Johnson’s hand didn’t touch home plate.

“We were really down. And they had two great plays on defense and were excited.”

In the top of the sixth, Mountain View’s leadoff hitter singled to left and the ball went through the legs of left fielder Rocky Frutos for a two-base error.

“That was his first error of the season,” Jacinto said. “That doesn’t happen in practice.”

A bouncing single past a drawn-in infield scored the winning run.

In the nine days since the defeat, Jacinto has no intention of pleading the Fifth about his fifth-inning calls.

“We knew we were going to squeeze; the only doubt was whether to bunt on the first or second pitch,” he said. “And we would have sent Johnson 100 out of 100 times.

“I told the players that you can’t feel bad about a game like that. You learn more by playing well and losing than playing mediocre and winning. That was one of the best games we played all year.”

Jacinto is also buoyed by the prospects for next season. Santa Paula was 15-8, 10-5 in Frontier League play, and often played a freshman, three sophomores and two juniors in the lineup.

The team’s top two pitchers, Frutos (5-1, 3.23 earned-run average and a .375 batting average) and Carlos Torres (3-3, 3.83 ERA) are juniors, and Olson-Pacheco, a three-year varsity player who batted .313, will anchor the infield next year.

“This season is our springboard,” Jacinto said. “We know we can play with anyone in the division. I don’t think any coach could be more excited about what he has for next year.”

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Santa Paula not only won its first playoff game in more than a half-century this season, the team survived Blue Monday, the first day of the BuenaVentura spring tournament.

Playing a doubleheader against Division I and II teams Camarillo and Buena, the Cardinals were drubbed, 17-5 and 18-4.

“We were pathetic and we got clobbered,” Jacinto said. “It was ugly. We were ready to blow out of town and never come back.”

But the Cardinals returned to Ventura, and in the next two days salvaged what became an historic season. Santa Paula played two more upper-division teams, losing to Ventura, 4-2, and beating Newbury Park, 3-2.

The loss to Ventura and Robert Verstraeten, one of the county’s top pitchers, ranks among the season’s bright spots, Jacinto said. Ventura was the Channel League champion and reached the second round of the Division II playoffs.

“We played one of our best games that day and we played well ever since,” Jacinto said.