No. 5 Hart Reverses Trend by Canyon

Canyon High has been a thorn in the side of Hart recently, the equivalent of that small stone in the infield dirt that turns the routine grounder into a near impossibility.

And, yet again, there was Canyon giving Hart a tough time on Friday.

Until the fourth inning.

Pitcher Justin Wiley of Hart helped himself with the bat in his hands, blooping a two-run double that broke open a close game and propelled Hart to a 7-1 Foothill League baseball victory at Hart.

Close league games have been entirely foreign to Hart, which had dusted off its previous three opponents by a combined 51-3 score. The closest was an 11-1 victory over Saugus last week.

But Hart gave up a run in the top of the first inning, left the bases loaded in the bottom half and ran into an unusual amount of trouble.

The Indians (8-1, 4-0 in league play), ranked No. 5 in the region by The Times, weren’t playing like the Indians until Wiley, who had been cutting down Canyon batters with his cut fastball, had seen enough and took the offensive.

With Hart holding a 2-1 edge in the fourth inning, Wiley’s two-out flare to right field scored Jamie Shields and Marke Horvat.

The pitcher had spoken with his bat.

“Anything to help myself out and the team out was the big thing,” Wiley said. “I needed more insurance runs.”

Actually, he didn’t.

Wiley (4-0), after giving up two doubles, a single and a run in the first inning, settled down nicely, allowing only two singles the rest of the way.

One of two senior starters, Wiley relied on his cut fastball to help him strike out four batters.

“It’s been three years coming on that,” Hart Coach Bud Murray said. “He’s always had trouble getting extension on his arm when he throws it, but now he’s getting extension. It breaks off pretty well.”

Canyon (4-5, 2-2) has seemed to have Hart’s number in recent seasons.

Last year, the Cowboys were the only Foothill League team to beat Hart, doing it twice.

And in 1996, Hart lost two league games, one of them to Canyon.

Canyon received a respectable performance from Mike Munn (1-3), who struck out eight, walked five and scattered six hits before being chased in the bottom of the sixth inning after a 385-foot run-scoring triple by Horvat.

The Cowboys stranded far too many runners to be competitive.

The worst case of runner abandonment was a one-out, bases-loaded chance in the third inning that produced nothing when Matt Palmer struck out and Erik Jackson grounded out.

Canyon stranded eight baserunners, at least one in every inning until the seventh.

“I thought we could help ourselves out by getting some big hits, but we didn’t” Canyon Coach Adam Schulhofer said. “It was a matter of who was going to get the big hit first. And they did.”

Hart, whose only loss is to Newbury Park in the Westside tournament, will have a good idea of how good it is today in a doubleheader at El Dorado, one of the better teams in Orange County.