Fountain Valley Can’t Stop Bishop Amat

It’s a final neither team will forget for a long time.

In a game that careened wildly between sloppy--a combined seven errors between the teams, six of them in the fifth--and sensational, La Puente Bishop Amat (24-6) upended two-time defending champion Fountain Valley, 10-9, to win its first Division I baseball championship at Blair Field. Attendance for the day was announced as 4,723.

Lancer center fielder Abel Montanez capped a three-run rally in the bottom of the seventh with a two-out RBI double that one-hopped the fence at the 387-foot sign. It was the third double hit by Bishop Amat in the seventh.

The hit brought home shortstop Dennis Wyrick with his fourth run of the game. Wyrick tied the score with an RBI single to right.

Montanez called the victory “redemption, not revenge,” although the Lancers clearly remembered losing the title to the Barons last year, 14-7.

“It was all luck,” said Montanez, who hit the game-winner off Chad Gonzalez, the third Fountain Valley pitcher. “You just thank God to be put in that kind of situation, where you can win a game that dramatically.”

Lancer Coach Glenn Martinez said: “To put our first championship into words . . . you just can’t describe the feeling. Losing to them last year helped. We had great respect for Fountain Valley--you must respect a team who gets to the championship game three straight times--but we weren’t in awe of them. We just went at them.”

The Barons (24-7) were attempting to become the first Division I team to win three straight titles since Chaffey (1956-58) and had a 14-game playoff winning streak before Saturday’s game.

But even though Fountain Valley would score nine runs in the fifth and sixth innings, the Barons’ pitching and defense could not hold back Bishop Amat.

“I had told the kids today that nobody was going to lose the game, but that somebody would win it,” Baron Coach Ron La Ruffa said. “I was wrong. We scored enough runs to win the game, but we just didn’t play enough good defense.

“I do hope they don’t let this take away from their season. It was a great season; they did more than anyone expected of them. This will hurt a while, but once they get over it they’ll understand that.”

On paper it figured to be a low-scoring affair because of the two starting pitchers, Eric Valenzuela for Bishop Amat and Steve Schenewerk for Fountain Valley. But neither was able to overcome the other team’s offense--or their team’s defense.

Schenewerk--who won last year’s title game with 2 1/3 innings of relief pitching--did not get a record-breaking 16th victory but was lucky to avoid his third loss of the season. He was gone after 4 1/3 innings, giving up six runs (three earned) and six hits. He committed one of four Baron errors in a nightmarish fifth.

Valenzuela lasted until one out in the sixth. He gave up seven hits and eight runs (five earned). He had two of his team’s three errors.

Paul Mangini (8-2), in relief of Valenzuela, got the win. Kameron Neilsen (4-2), who relieved Schenewerk in the fifth, took the loss.

Fountain Valley looked to take control of the game in the sixth, when they scored five runs to reverse a 6-4 Lancers’ lead.

But this season, it was Bishop Amat that got the last rally.

“When you’re playing the defending champions you have to be able to do many things,” Martinez said. “Our kids just never gave up.”