Baldwin's Kimo Klask eluded the tag at first yesterday against Kamehameha. The Bears lost 17-12.
Baldwin too wild
to beat Warriors
Patience was the Kamehameha baseball team's greatest virtue yesterday as the Warriors rallied to a wild 17-12 win over Baldwin in the quarterfinals of the Wally Yonamine Foundation State Baseball Championship.
Kamehameha scored 10 runs on just two hits over the final three innings to advance to today's semifinal round.
Baldwin pounded out 14 hits, but let four-run leads slip away twice in the game as five Bears pitchers combined for 15 walks and hit two more Kamehameha batters to aid the Warriors' comeback.
"Sometimes it doesn't matter how you get there as long as you get there," Kamehameha coach Vern Ramie said. "Today we're just happy to be able to advance."
Baldwin (14-4) went ahead 4-0 in the first and led 11-7 after four innings. But Kamehameha (18-5) plated three runs in the fifth and three more in the sixth without the benefit of a hit to take the lead.
All three of Kamehameha's fifth-inning runs came on bases-loaded walks. A balk and a two-run error led to the Warriors' next three runs.
"We pitched pretty well all year and for some reason we couldn't find the plate today," Baldwin coach Kahai Shishido said. "It's a credit to Kamehameha -- they swung the bats when they needed to, they were disciplined, they didn't expand the strike zone.
"You get 14 hits, you score 12 runs, you think you'd win the ballgame. But on the other side of the field we just didn't play well."
Kamehameha senior Koa Kaleo struck out eight and walked none and picked up the win with five innings of effective relief.
"We needed someone to come in and make a stop," Ramie said. "We didn't put up a zero on the scoreboard until the fifth inning, and you don't win very many ballgames if you do that. Koa came in and did a great job and threw strikes."
Kamehameha's Ryson Mauricio lost a groundball hit by Baldwin's Kimo Klask yesterday.
Kamehameha answered by sending 10 batters to the plate in a six-run second-inning outburst, highlighted by Aaron Nichols' two-run triple to left.
Baldwin came back with four more runs in the bottom of the frame and took an 8-6 lead on Alex Betsill's double off the left-field fence. The Bears stretched the lead with one run in the fourth and two in the fifth.
Rather than panic, Kamehameha got back into the game one walk at a time.
Three Baldwin pitchers combined to walk six consecutive batters with one out in the fifth to bring three Kamehameha players across the plate and cut the deficit to 11-10.
"They were struggling to throw strikes, so we started taking some pitches and tried to take them into the count a little bit," Ramie said. "It started to work for us, so we just stayed with it and we wanted them to show us they could throw strikes."
The next inning, the Warriors loaded the bases on a hit batter and two walks and knotted the score on a balk by Kalehua Moniz. The Warriors went ahead when a dropped fly ball in center field allowed two more runners to score.
"We've been down before ... and we'd come back before so we kept believing in our pitchers and our bats," Nichols said.
Kamehameha's bats did the work in the seventh as a triple by Nick Freitas and a two-run double by Eli Chee helped the Warriors put the game out of reach.
"We didn't play real well. We were very, very fortunate to get back into this ballgame and come back to win it," Ramie said. "Sometimes you have to be lucky and today, definitely, luck was on our side."
HHSAA baseball
At Les Murakami Stadium
Seeds: 1. Punahou. 2. Kailua. 3. Baldwin. 4. Waiakea.Yesterday
6: Waiakea 11, Moanalua 5
7: Kamehameha 17, Baldwin 12
8: Punahou 10, Kauai 0, 5 inn.
9: Kailua 5, Mililani 1Today
10: Kamehameha-Hawaii vs. Aiea, 10 a.m.
11: Kauai vs. Moanalua, 12:30 p.m.
12: Mililani vs. Baldwin, 3 p.m.
13: Punahou vs. Waiakea, 5:30 p.m.
14: Kailua vs. Kamehameha, 8 p.m.
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