Poly Stops Chatsworth at The Wall

Back, back, back . . . to the City Section final for the Poly High baseball team.

The Parrots earned their first trip to Dodger Stadium since 1992 when right fielder Adrian Perez made a game-ending, warning-track grab of David Sark’s fly ball in the bottom of the seventh inning to preserve a 6-4 victory over Chatsworth on Tuesday at Pierce College.

Sark’s drive, with two out and Frank Dipoma on second base, had members of both dugouts standing in anticipation as Perez backpedaled. Perez settled beneath the ball and gathered it in just a few feet from the fence.

“I was just getting ready to jump,” Perez said. “I knew I was going to get it.”

Perez appeared to be the only one certain.

“I thought it was gone,” Poly Coach Chuck Schwal said.

So did reliever Gustavo Banuelos, who surrendered a solo home run to Danny Phillips two batters before Dipoma doubled with two out.

Banuelos, who notched his third save, held Chatsworth to one hit through 2 2/3 innings and struck out six but was hit hard in the seventh.

But the junior right-hander didn’t rattle.

“I just treated it like it was a regular game,” Banuelos said. “When [Sark] hit it, I was hoping it wouldn’t go over. All along, we’ve had a goal on this team, and all along we thought we could make it.”

Poly (27-5-1), which plays Kennedy at 7:30 tonight for the title, never trailed, scoring twice in each of the first two innings to take a 4-2 lead into the third.

Chatsworth (22-7) narrowed the gap to 4-3 in the third on Sark’s sacrifice fly that scored Phillips. But Poly added two runs in the sixth, one on a run-scoring single by Perez.

Banuelos relieved Jerry Heredia (12-2) in the fourth with one out and a runner at second and recorded two strikeouts to end the threat.

“Gus doesn’t care [about pressure],” Poly Coach Chuck Schwal said. “He’s got ice in his veins.”

And Schwal had an ice-water shower, courtesy of his players, who doused the fourth-year coach.