Fairmont Win Completes Picture

The celebration was so subdued when the game ended Tuesday afternoon that it was difficult to decipher just what Fairmont Academy, a growing prep school, had accomplished.

The Huskies (1-5, 1-4), in their second season of baseball, not only rallied to win their first game, 6-5, over St. Michael’s Prep at El Toro Community Park, they finally played a complete game. All 15 previous games in school history were ended by the mercy rule.

“I think we went six innings a couple of weeks ago, but all the other times we ended after five,” Fairmont Coach Mike Alves said.

Alves, a former assistant at Mater Dei and Irvine, recorded his first victory as a varsity head coach, although he said he felt like he got it last Friday after outscoring Liberty Christian. That game, however, was declared a forfeit in favor of Liberty Christian because a Fairmont player forgot to bring his uniform to school, and that left only eight players eligible to compete.

After Tuesday’s milestone, played in front of eight spectators, four of whom were St. Michael’s students clad in coats and ties, Fairmont players didn’t know how to celebrate. The school has given up 87 runs in five league games.

“We’re all experienced in dealing with defeats, but we have had no experience in winning,” said senior shortstop Omar Hashmy, a two-year starter.

So the Huskies just stood around their first base dugout.

“Congratulations to them. I know it was a big win for them,” first-year St. Michael’s Coach Stephen Boyle said. “It was tough to lose one like that. Both teams played well.”

St. Michael’s (3-6, 0-5), a boys’ boarding school, was the victim of the mercy rule in its previous four games, having been outscored, 58-5. But Boyle, a priest, thought the Pioneers could win this one. The team arrived early and Boyle traded his ceremonial habit robe for faded baseball pants, a blue golf cap and a San Diego Padre jacket as he took the third-base coaching box.

Starter Mike Tucker pitched four strong innings and later St. Michael’s held a 5-4 lead going into the seventh. But back-to-back ground-rule doubles by Pradeep Prasad and pitcher Brian Papez in the top of the seventh drove in two runs. Papez, a freshman right-hander, struck out six, gave up three hits and set the Pioneers down in order in the bottom of the seventh.

Prasad, a first baseman, turned in five stellar unassisted putouts in the field.