LAKEPORT >> The smallest of things led to the biggest of rallies on Friday afternoon as Clear Lake parlayed a two-out passed ball into a six-run uprising in a 7-2 victory over the Lower Lake Trojans, a win that guarantees the Cardinals no worse than a co-championship in the North Central League I.
Clear Lake (13-1 league, 17-5 overall) won its final 13 league games after losing 2-0 at Cloverdale in late March. Should Cloverdale (12-1) win its final league game on Wednesday at home against Middletown (6-7), a playoff between the Cardinals and Eagles would take place a week from today in Lakeport at a time to be announced. That game will determine which of the two teams gets an automatic berth into the North Coast Section playoffs — either Cloverdale in Division IV or Clear Lake in Division V. No matter the outcome, both teams would still be league co-champs, receive pennants and continue on to the postseason. Should Middletown happen to do Clear Lake a great big favor and upset the Eagles, the Cardinals would be the undisputed NCL I champs and no playoff game would be needed.
Lower Lake (9-4, 17-6) closes out its league schedule Tuesday in Fort Bragg before moving on to the Division IV playoffs as an at-large team, which is all but a foregone conclusion.
The Trojans, who were hoping to spoil Clear Lake’s championship party and beat the Cardinals for the first time since 1993, got off to a pretty good start when the third batter of the game, Ashlynn Mock, smacked a double down the left-field line to score Shelbie Harris, who drew a one-out walk.
“We did what we were hoping to do, get the early lead,” Lower Lake coach Chris Emberson said.
Clear Lake didn’t allow that lead to stand for long. Hannah Norwood fought off several Harris 3-2 pitches before singling to center field. Shayanne Chapin sacrificed her to second and was safe on a fielder’s choice. Harris hit Alicia Ledesma to load the bases for cleanup hitter Aliza Atkins, who smoked a hard grounder to Mock at shortstop, setting up a force play at the plate.
“I don’t think she could have hit that ball any better,” Clear Lake coach Gary Pickle said. “A couple of feet either way and it scores a couple of runs or clears the bases.”
Winning pitcher Rachel Wingler then rolled a soft grounder to Mock, who had no play at the plate this time around and had to throw on to first base for the out as Chapin scored to tie the game. Harris ended the inning by getting a flyball to center field.
Wingler worked a 1-2-3 top of the second and it looked like Harris might do the same in the bottom of the inning. In fact, she needed only two pitches to retire the first two batters — Destinee Garcia and Mina Werner. Anessia Jack took a Harris fastball off her knee to keep the inning alive and turn over the batting order. Norwood promptly delivered a double to center field to give Clear Lake a 2-1 lead.
And that’s when the inning a took a weird turn.
The next batter, Chapin, reached on a bunt single turned double when the Trojans didn’t cover second, As Chapin smartly advanced a base, Norwood held her ground at third. Harris jumped ahead in the count to Ledesma at 0-2 and then struck her out swinging, but the ball eluded catcher Destiny Apodaca and rolled toward the backstop as Norwood scored, Chapin moved up to third and Ledesma reached first.
Sensing opportunity on a much grander scale, the Cardinals pressed home their advantage. Atkins tripled off the base of the wall in center field to make it a 5-1 game and Wingler smacked a double that rolled to the wall in right-center field to score Atkins. Emily Psalmonds followed with a hard-hit RBI single to make it 7-1.
“You never know,” Pickle said. “Two pitches and two outs and then we score six runs. It (momentum) can change on a dime. When you play a real good team things happen quickly.”
On Clear Lake’s clutch two-out hitting after the passed ball, Pickle said, “Our hitting is really starting to pick up. The last few games we’ve hit the ball throughout our lineup. I think we’re starting to peak at just the right time.”
“You’ve got to play a clean softball game against this type of team,” Lower Lake coach Chris Emberson said of the passed ball that turned in a game-breaker. “Physically we can compete with any team but sometimes mentally we lack a little bit of focus. We did some things today that we shouldn’t have done. We know better.”
Staked to a big lead, Wingler retired the Trojans in order in the third and fourth. Lower Lake scored its final run in the fifth when Clear Lake catcher Jack scooped a swinging strike three out of the dirt but threw wildly to first base for an error. With runners at second and third and outs, Harris tomahawked a high Wingler pitch into medium-deep center field, but Norwood caught the well-struck ball nearly in her tracks to end the threat.
“We couldn’t get that one big hit after we caught that break,” Emberson said in comparing the Lower Lake top of the fifth to the Clear Lake bottom of the second. “They got that hit.”
Lower Lake managed to put two more runners on base after two were out in the top of the seventh but the game ended when Diener bounced into a force play at third base. It might have been a different story had not Clear Lake’s Psalmonds robbed Apodaca of a single leading off the inning. Apodaca hit a soft liner earmarked for center field but the junior second baseman snagged the ball with a diving catch.
Lower Lake’s defense also shined at times. The Trojans threw out Mina Werner at the plate to end the third inning, gunned down courtesy runner Crystal Zepeda on a steal attempt at third in the fifth inning, and threw out courtesy runner Emily Omiotek on an attempted steal of second in the sixth inning.
Wingler finished with six strikeouts and one walk while scattering five Lower Lake hits, two of them by Alex DeGraw, who didn’t enter the game until the top of the fifth as a pinch-hitter.
Harris settled down to blank the Cardinals over the final four innings as she mixed in changeups with fastballs to keep Clear Lake’s batters off balance. In fact, she appeared to gain significant velocity in the game’s latter stages.
“She gets competitive when things go sideways and starts throwing harder,” Emberson said. “I’ve seen her do that before.”
“Her changeup helped set up her fastball and she got us guessing a little bit,” Pickle said. “She really threw that changeup well.”
