KELSEYVILLE >> Hope springs eternal. Even in Lake County high school baseball where Clear Lake, the North Central League I‘s runaway leader, added a 10th victory in 10 outings by defeating the Knights 11-4 on Friday afternoon at Lloyd Larson Field.
The Knights went into the seventh and final inning trailing Clear Lake 11-1. That sounds like a hopeless situation for Kelseyville … unless you are Kelseyville coach Lou Poloni.
“I thought it was kind of exciting from our side. We were trying to score 11. I’ve been around where that’s happened,” Poloni said. “I believe that it’s not over until the lady sings. If you’re down by 28 points with one minute left in football it’s over. In basketball the same. But not baseball. It’s an untimed sport.”
Poloni also remains optimistic that the Knights (6-5 league, 10-11 overall) will be seeded into the North Coast Section Division IV playoffs, which he believes will require one more victory for a total of seven league wins.
The Knights made a game of it in the early going against Clear Lake and were tied at 1-1 after three innings. But they yielded twp go-ahead runs in the fourth and entered the sixth trailing 5-1.
In the end, the Cards (10-0, 20-0) scored 11 runs on only four hits. Eight walks by the Knights’ pitchers contributed heavily.
The final inning was, in a word, ugly with errors, hit batsmen, wild pitches and pitching changes for both sides, even though the outcome was sealed … no matter what Poloni said.
In the top of the seventh inning the roof caved in on the Knights. The Cardinals scored six runs, three times on walks with the bases loaded.
Meanwhile the Cards’ Jordan Chana kept the Knights at bay from the mound. A “ground ball” pitcher who doesn’t depend on strikeouts, Chana retired 12 Knights on grounders while improving to 8-0 on the season.
“They’re a great team,” Poloni said of the Cardinals. “They played great defense. They’re very opportunistic like we knew they would be. And they get on and they do their job and they score and they do a lot of stuff well.”
Regarding his own charges, Poloni said, “I was happy with the way we swang the bat today. Jordan Chana has been rough on us in past years. We didn’t get a lot of hits, but I thought we got the ball on the bat well today.
“I thought that (starting pitcher) Noah Lyndall did a really good job today for us. His pitch count was getting up there and I need him to close if anything happens on Tuesday (against Lower Lake),” he said.
Kelseyville has six hits and Clear Lake only four, the most significant one being a triple by Cole Brodnansky.
Logan Barrick went 1-for-2 with a double for the Knights.
Clear Lake coach Zane Jensen declined comment.
