LAKEPORT — No errors, no walks and plenty of extra-base hits made it a near-perfect day for the still-perfect Clear Lake Cardinals, 9-0 winners over the Fort Bragg Timberwolves in a North Central League I interlock varsity softball game on Thursday afternoon in Lakeport.
Clear Lake improved to 6-0 on the season with its best effort so far in 2008, according to head coach Gary Pickle, who watched all elements of the Cardinals” game — hitting, pitching and defense — come together on a breezy first day of spring at the Clear Lake High School campus.
“To date our best game … outstanding defense,” Pickle said. “That one was more important to us (than the win over Ukiah on Tuesday) because they”re in our (Class A) section,” Pickle said of a senior-dominated Timberwolf squad that is among the favorites to win the North Central League I North title this season.
Sophomore pitcher Liz Sanderson went the distance, scattering four singles, striking out four and walking none. While the Cardinals” other sophomore pitcher, Rylie Gabehart, was warmed up and ready to go late in the game, her services weren”t needed.
“I was looking to see if she was working ahead in the count,” Pickle said of Sanderson, who relies on her ball movement and pitch location to keep batters off-balance, the same way Erin Gatton did for the Cardinals in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “She threw a Gatton special today,” Pickle said.
Sanderson took the count to three balls only twice in the game and came back to get both hitters. Two days earlier against Ukiah, a 10-7 Clear Lake victory, she struggled to stay ahead in the count.
“We worked on that after the last game,” Pickle said. “You can”t use all of your pitches if you”re behind in the count. Today she kept them off-balance. They didn”t pick up the timing on her pitches.”
Sanderson was backed by a flawless defensive effort that featured a few gems. Among them:
— The Cardinals recorded a 1-4-6 putout to end the top of the third. A hard grounder ticked off Sanderson”s glove and ricocheted off second baseman Samantha Espinoza”s glove right to shortstop Kaila Sterbank, who alertly collected the rebound and stepped on second base to force a runner.
— Sterbank and Espinoza each made nice plays to spear hard liners on back-to-back batters in the top of the fourth, a six-pitch inning for Sanderson.
— Catcher Julie Jackson gunned down Karina Becerra trying to steal second base in the top of the fifth. Becerra led off the inning with a single and surprised her coach — and everyone else — attempting to steal with her team trailing 7-0. It turned into an even bigger play when the next batter singled.
— Left fielder Jesse Sondag made a diving, tumbling catch to rob Kara Bruce of a line-drive single to open the top of the sixth.
Clear Lake”s offense did its part, too. Unlike the win over Ukiah on Tuesday, a game in which the Cardinals played small ball with slap-hit singles and 10 stolen bases, this time they pounded the ball, rattling the fences with six extra-base hits — four doubles and two triples — out of 12 hits overall.
“We used the short game early and I think it rattled them,” Pickle said of the bottom of the first when Sterbank led off with a slap single just to the left of the pitcher”s rubber, stole second and third and scored on Espinoza”s single, “but we just didn”t get into a position where we had to use it later in the game.”
Espinoza tried to stretch her hit into a double and was thrown at second. Jackson followed with a single, the third straight hit allowed by losing pitcher LaDonna Mehtlan, stole second and scored on the Cardinals” first extra-base hit of the day, a booming two-out triple to right-center field off the bat of Mori Jordan, who connected on a 2-2 pitch.
Mehtlan set down Clear Lake in order in the second and third, but the Cardinals broke the game wide open with a five-run fifth that featured five hits, including three doubles and a triple.
Candy Diener led off by drilling a 2-0 fastball to the fence in left field. Pinch-runner Rachel Thornton scored on Katie Reynolds” one-out double to the fence in left-center field and Gabehart followed with a ground-rule double that skipped over the fence in right-center field to make it 4-0. Pinch-hitter Corinne McKenney singled to put runners at the corners and Apryl Comstock”s RBI single pushed the Cardinals” lead to 5-0. On Comstock”s hit, pinch-runner Rebecca Baker was thrown out trying to go from first to third.
Sterbank followed with an RBI triple that bounced up against the fence in center field. She scored on a passed ball to make it 7-0.
Clear Lake added two unearned runs in the bottom of the sixth when the Timberwolves made two throwing errors on the same play.
Courtney Doeding, the Timberwolves” ace, pitched the final two innings against Clear Lake, allowing two hits and two unearned runs. A harder thrower than Mehtlan, Doeding”s speed didn”t seem to bother the Cardinals” hitters, least of all Jordan, who doubled with two outs in the fifth but was cut down at third trying for a triple.
“He probably stayed with her (Mehtlan) an inning too long,” Pickle said of his Fort Bragg counterpart, head coach Rusty Malsolm. “He wanted to throw her today because she throws a few different pitches at different speeds. I thought we adjusted to the speeds really well. Even when Doeding came in, we did a good job adjusting to her.”
Sterbank, Jordan and Gabehart each had two hits for the Cardinals. Becerra went 2-for-3 for Fort Bragg, now 3-1 on the season.
The two teams could meet again in the Ukiah Tournament on March 28-29 at Ukiah High School.
“They”re a good team, they just haven”t played a lot of games yet,” Pickle said. “I think we caught them at the right time.”
