Yellow Pages
SELAH — After four hours and 11 innings in 104-degree heat Tuesday, the Burlington Sox American Legion AA baseball team gets the privilege of doing it again today.
The Sox kept their season alive with a 6-5 victory in 11 innings over Central Valley of Spokane at the state tournament, scoring the winning run when the opposing shortstop threw to the wrong base.
That capped a game in which the Sox were down a run in the sixth and tied it, and were down to their final strike in the eighth and tied it.
“It was a war, a dogfight,” Sox coach John Thurmond said. “It was just back and forth. It was a loser-out game and neither team wanted to go home.”
Burlington will face Richland at 5 p.m. today.
The Sox will do so after a bottom of the 11th in which they scored the winning run without a hit.
Ambrose Maldonado led off with a walk, and moved to second when Jacob Schifferl was hit by a pitch. Ian Capron grounded into a fielder’s choice to short, moving Maldonado to third.
Central Valley intentionally walked Quinn Holt to load the bases, bringing up Zach Livingston.
Livingston grounded a ball to shortstop but, inexplicably, Central Valley’s shortstop threw to first for the second out instead of trying for the double play or throwing home for the force to keep the run from scoring.
“It was 104 degrees, we’d been playing for almost four hours, and I think he lost his head,” Thurmond said. “There were a lot of weird things that happened.”
That made a winner of Capron, who threw the final five innings in relief of Chris Vivanco.
“Both of our pitchers did a very good job,” Thurmond said. “We had some errors behind them. It seemed like every inning our fielders put our pitchers in bad spots, and they bailed us out. They were both outstanding today. They both pitched long on a hot day, and they were warriors.”
Central Valley scored three in the top of the sixth to take a 4-3 edge, but Troy O’Neill’s third RBI of the game, in the bottom half, scored Willy Skinnell to tie the score at 4-4.
Central Valley went up 5-4 in the top of the eighth, but the Sox came back again. With two out and two strikes against him, Cole Whited singled in Damon Acoba with the tying run.
O’Neill finished 3-for-5 on the day and drove in three. Tyler McLeod and Acoba each went 2-for-3.
