Sports
Little League Minors TOC: Suisun Drops Extra Innings Heartbreaker to Benicia 9-3
The Giants comeback falls short after the Yankees six-run explosion in the eighth.
The final score wasn't indicative of how close the Suisun Giants avoided elimination from the District 53 Minors Tournament of Champions.
Suisun couldn’t take advantage of a bases-loaded and nobody out threat in the bottom of the seventh inning, falling in extra innings to the Benicia Yankees 9-3 in the first round of the Minors TOC at the Cordelia Tri-Valley Little League Fields on Monday.
“We got guys on base but we just couldn’t get it done,” Giants manager Derrick Johnson said. “I would have liked to have seen better, but it just didn’t happen. We played eight innings of baseball. What more can you ask for?”
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Suisun left 12 runners on base, with half of them coming from bases-loaded threats that were for naught in the third and eighth innings. Down 2-0, the Giants two-out third inning rally was squashed with a strikeout.
Ryan Maxwell would drive-in Alex McFall in the fifth inning for Suisun’s first run of the game, making it a one-run game at the time.
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The Yankees would respond with an insurance run in the top of the sixth to make it a 3-1 game, and putting the Giants in do or die mode in the bottom half of the inning.
Die, Suisun didn’t.
Darion Johnson would walk with one out and advanced to third after back-to-back wild pitches from Benicia reliever Andy Jones. Cohen would blast a deep drive to right field, which Yankees right fielder Tyler Colaizzi couldn’t snag, as it struck his glove and rolled past him to the wall to cut it back to a 3-2 game.
Jones control issues continued, as another set of wild pitches allowed Cohen to score to tie the game at 3-3, sending it to extra innings.
In the bottom of the seventh, the Giants loaded the bases with nobody out but Maxwell and Hezekiah Bates struckout looking and Jalen Morris was called out at home after trying to score from third on a wild pitch to end the promising threat. Had Suisun scored, it would’ve won the game.
Benicia made sure Suisun wouldn’t have another real chance to win the game by putting up six runs in the top of the eighth to put the game away.
“Eight innings of baseball is almost a game and a half,” Johnson said. “I’m proud of what they did. We’re just going to get ready for All-Stars right now.”
Johnson plans on most of the team returning for another shot at the title next year.
“They’ll be back. We’ll be back.”
Johnson was just glad his team pulled through and fought until the end.
“Like I tell my kids, just play hard,” he said. “If you play hard good things are going to happen. If you know you played hard, at the end of the game you’ll be mad for a minute, but it’ll go away because you know you didn’t leave anything on the field, and that’s the most important part.”
The Minors start All-Stars July 2.