Tartans Rally to Preserve 6-6 Tie in Tournament Game Against San Dimas

ARCADIA- Resilient would be the word to describe the Glendora baseball varsity team. Time and time again this season they have found themselves behind, only to scrape back into a game. Saturday’s contest against San Dimas was no exception as the Tartans fought back from a deficit to tie the Saints 6-6 in the Apache Invitational Tournament at Arcadia High School.

Glendora (7-3-1, 4-1) was coming off an 8-4 loss to Baseline League leaders Etiwanda High School (10-2, 3-0) on Friday afternoon, but after finding themselves down 1-0 in the first inning of Saturday’s game, the Tartans scored two runs of their own on their half of the inning for their first rally courtesy of RBI hits by seniors Aaron Miller and William Regis.

Glendora increased their lead to 3-1 when junior fielder Donovan Holmes stole second base, and then reached home plate on a fielding error by San Dimas.

A number of Glendora miscues allowed the Saints to tie the score at 3-3 including a player who got hit by a pitch and a ball mishandled by catcher Brennan Salgado which allowed the Saints’ Matt Munoz to score from third base.

The teams added a run each in their respective halfs of the fourth. Freshman Daniel Milwee, who stole a base earlier in the inning, scored on another throwing error by the Tartans to give the Saints a 4-3 advantage, but Glendora responded by tying the game again on a one out solo homerun blast by senior Nick Cooksey.

Glendora Coach Dan Henley said he was pleased with his team’s ability to battle and stay in the game.

 “It’s a spring break tournament and you never know how kids are going to react. We got down once and came back, we got down again against a real scrappy ball club who’s enjoying some early success and we stayed right there, we stayed focused,” said Henley.

Despite a good pitching performance by junior Calvin Berdugo which included three strikeouts, the Tartans turned to senior pitcher Nicholas Hall in the fifth inning to close the Saints out. However, once again the Tartans misplayed the ball on several occasions as they gave up two runs on a pair of hits and found themselves down 6-4.

“He came in and gave up the two runs in his first inning of work and then the last innings that he threw he did a much better job, he came in and had some deep counts, and he executed 3-2 pitches to get outs,” said  Henley about Hall’s pitching in relief of Berdugo.

“He did things that he’s been doing all year, that’s pitching effectively with his arsenal, curve ball, change-up, fastball, we’re proud of what he did to give us the chance to score that last run.”

 Following Nick Cooksey’s two-out single in the sixth inning, John Alexander, who’s averaging .375 this season, sailed a two run homerun over the fence to deadlock the game at 6-6.

The Tartans loaded the bases once more on hits by Salgado and Miller but were unable to capitalize on that offensive threat.

“My heart kind of sank,” said Alexander in reference to his homerun shot. Just like many of the Glendora fans in attendance, he initially thought it would come up short and be caught by the San Dimas outfielders.

“I was just trying to find a way to help my team win. I feel like we battled all over the place, our defense was good, we just couldn’t find a way to win it,” said the senior slugger.

“Yes it’s kind of an empty feeling of a tie, but moving forward, it could have been the antithesis of that -- a loss -- so they battled, they really did. It wasn’t pretty at times, especially on the defensive end of it, but we got back in it,” said Henley.

BOX SCORE

SCHOOL       1    2    3      4     5   6   7   8             R    H     E 

Glendora     2     1    0     1     0   2   0   0              6     7     3      

San Dimas   1     0    2     1     2   0   0   0              6    12    2