BASEBALL: Offense Powers Leigh Past Evergreen Valley

The Score: Leigh 9, Evergreen Valley 5

The Star:  Fresh off a narrow win on Wednesday, the Leigh High baseball team gave the ball to senior Ricky Hastie on Friday. In his first start of the season—the hard throwing right-hander usually starts at shortstop and is used in late inning situations on the mound—Hastie certainly didn’t disappoint.

The flamethrower struck out eight hitters in four innings on the hill, helping Leigh defeat Evergreen Valley 9-5 on a gloomy Friday afternoon at Leigh High in San Jose.

Hastie also did plenty of damage with the bat as well. The starting pitcher bounced a key RBI single through the left side of the infield in the third inning to score two and added another RBI knock during a big six-run fourth inning for the host Longhorns.

The Turning Point: Leigh, currently in first place in the Blossom Valley Athletic League Santa Teresa or B Division, pushed three runs across in the third inning to break up the scoreless pitchers dual. After back-to-back games in which the Longhorns offense combined to score three runs total, the three early runs were nice, but the fourth inning scoring output was even better. Leigh banged out five hits and walked three times en route to a game changing six-run bottom half of the fourth.

Junior Scott Mercer kicked off the fun with a line shot RBI single to right field that scored Paul Eischens and Cory Koehne. Hastie followed suit with his second RBI hit of the game, then senior Jeff Baker unloaded a towering RBI double to deep center that pushed across two more Longhorns. By the end of the madness, Leigh had a 9-0 advantage after four innings of play. Eischens recorded two hits in the fourth inning for the home team.

The Quotes:  “We’ve been struggling a bit lately at the plate,” Leigh head coach Chris Perry said about his team’s recent scoring slump. “We took it really serious yesterday at practice and it paid off for us today at the plate. It was nice to see us get some timely hits and score some runs early.”

 The balanced Longhorns team looks like a dangerous playoff team, but the head coach knows that there’s a lot of baseball left to be played.  

 “I knew going into the year that we were going to be very competitive,” Perry said. “I wanted to give Ricky (Hastie) a start today. He throws that 12-to-6 curve and it’s a tough pitch for guys to hit. We just need to keep playing good baseball and good things will happen for us.”

 What's Next?  Leigh will take part in the Fight Against Cancer Tournament next week at Leland High School in San Jose. Leigh will play Willow Glen High at 2 pm on Monday.

Bottom Line: Friday’s game saw the best of both worlds from the Longhorns in the first six innings of play. The Leigh pitching combo of Hastie and lefty Brandon Evans held the Evergreen Valley lineup to only two hits and zero runs through six quality innings of work. The offense produced nine runs in the first four innings, providing more than enough support for its stingy pitching staff. The first 20 outs of the game were handled with ease, however, the final out became a bit of an adventure. Evergreen Valley rattled off five runs off five hits and two Leigh errors in the seventh before a fly out left two more Evergreen Valley runners stranded in the top half of the seventh.  The bit of Giants-like torture wasn’t a welcomed site for the Leigh bunch and the coaching staff. Leigh is now 12-2-1 overall and 12-1 in league play.

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Leigh 9, Evergreen Valley 5

L- 0 0 3 6 0 0 0- 9 8 2

EV- 0 0 0 0  0 0 5 – 5 7 1

WP: Hastie. LP: Lagman

Records: Leigh 12-2-1, 12-1 Santa Teresa. Evergreen Valley 4-8, 4-8 Santa Teresa.