In a tight championship game at Whaley Park on Sunday, two local heavyweights slugged it out, as Long Beach ultimately edged out Heartwell 4-3 to win the PONY Sectional Tournament championship. Heartwell will play the winner of Lynwood and Santa Monica Monday at 7:30pm for the right to also advance to the next round of play.
Long Beach had been on a wallop of a tear en route to the title game, winning their first two contests (against Santa Monica and Lynwood) by a combined 38-0. The boys in navy blue did score first, if not quite as often as their opening round games—they took a 3-0 lead in the top of the third, with RBI hits by Cody Heath, Jordan Ybarra, and Jayson Casias. At that point the pitchers from both teams had been on top of things, and it looked like that could be the margin of victory (the two teams had left eight runners on base already). When his team took the lead, Long Beach’s starting pitcher, Britt Barmeyer, had struck out seven straight batters.
But in the bottom of the third, Heartwell began working back in—J.P. Crawford, an unstoppable hitter through the tournament, opened things up with a double, then was sent home when Johnny Anderson reached first on an error. Long Beach, who didn’t display the deft fielding they had through the first two games (they committed four errors), made two great plays at home to end the inning as catcher Kyle Ulanday made two great catch-and-tags to grab the final outs.
Heartwell got back at it the next inning, though, scoring first off a Crawford RBI double, and to tie the game when Long Beach pitcher Jeremiah Gordon walked J.P. Yakel with the bases loaded. Gordon, to his enormous credit, dug in and stopped the bleeding with the bases loaded and just one out, striking out Craig Hamil and then getting the second-base runner in a pickle for the third out.
With three innings left and two great pitchers throwing in relief (Gordon for Long Beach and Crawford for Heartwell), there was no way anything other than a mistake was going to decide the tournament’s champion—and that’s the way it shook out. Gordon and Crawford both struck out five down the stretch, and their defenses shored up well behind them, knocking balls down and not making errors. But with the bases loaded in the top of the sixth, one of Crawford’s pitches got behind his catcher, and Long Beach scored the deciding run with two outs.
“We’ll take it,” said Long Beach manager Ken Jakemer after the game was over, the medals had been handed out, the team pictures had been taken in front of the scoreboard, and the postgame victory speech had been given by he and his two coaches, Chris Elsea and Stacy Ybarra. “We were uncharacteristically sloppy on defense, but we got clutch hits when we needed them and our pitchers were great.” His team showed the scrappy never-say-die mentality that Whaley’s teams are becoming known for, scoring all but one of their runs with two outs. They now advance as a top seed to the Regional Tournament to be held in Glendora, while Heartwell will need to take care of Lynwood or Santa Monica Monday night to advance to the Regional Tourney in Whittier. Beyond the Regional Tournament lies the Zone Tourney, and beyond that the PONY World Series in Pennsylvania—both teams know the way there. The next two weeks will tell if they can find their way back.
Regional play begins on July 23rd—stay tuned to LBPostSports.com for updates.
