By Pete Borello
AAU team has memorable season with 2nd-place finish at national
Members of the West Bay Titans may spend the rest of the summer pondering what could have been; how they came so close - just one win, to be exact - to a national championship.
Titans manager Dave Salter, however, hopes the players on his 15-and-under baseball team also relish what they did achieve at the Amateur Athletic Union National Championships.
“Placing second in the nation is quite an accomplishment and getting to play for a national championship is very rare,” said Salter, whose team fell 8-3 to the NorCal All-Stars in the Aug. 2 title game. “Hopefully, they’ll remember that for a long time.”
The Titans - featuring players from several local high schools - surely returned from Kingsport, Tenn., with plenty of fond memories.
West Bay, which won seven of its 10 games, may have been the most resilient team in the weeklong tournament. The Titans were on the brink of elimination twice - after first-round losses in both preliminary and championship pool play - but rebounded to beat a pair of undefeated teams on their way to the division final.
“They came through in the clutch,” Salter said of a West Bay team that strung together five wins in a row after a 2-2 start. “They did a great job.”
Those who didn’t consider the Titans a title contender prior to their game against the undefeated East Cobb Astros likely had a change of heart afterward. West Bay pulled out a 4-1 extra-inning victory against the heavily favored team from Georgia to qualify for the quarterfinals.
Palo Alto High’s David Stringer and St. Francis’ Matt Long played the hero roles for the Titans. Stringer had a no-hitter going for 5 1/3 innings, primarily using off-speed pitches to keep East Cobb at bay.
“He didn’t have his best fastball,” Salter said. “He pitched - he didn’t just go out there and throw.”
Centerfielder Long, who made a circus catch to end the sixth inning, came through at the plate in the seventh. With West Bay trailing 1-0, Long forced extra play by doubling down the rightfield line, advancing to third on a grounder, then scoring on a wild pitch.
An inning later, the Titans took the lead on a throwing error that allowed Gunn’s Ryan McDermott to score from third. Mountain View’s Erik Davis then bounced a pinch-hit single through the left side of the infield to score St. Francis’ Daniel Descalso and Brady Fuerst.
Long pitched the final inning to earn the save.
In the semifinals, the Titans knocked off another undefeated and favored team: the Tampa Bay Renegades.
“They were very highly touted,” Salter said of Tampa Bay. “They were written up (in newspapers) a lot and had outscored their opponents something like 80-14.”
The Renegades failed to score a single run - or even get many singles - against West Bay, which prevailed 3-0. Tampa Bay mustered just three hits off Titans starter Davis, who went the distance.
“He went out there and dominated,” Salter said of Davis, who went 3-0 in the tournament with 24 strikeouts and no runs allowed. “He kept the fastball in on the hitters and mixed it up with his curveball.”
Davis helped himself at the plate by going 3 for 3 with two runs scored. He also was aided by the fine defensive efforts of Descalso, Fuerst and Los Altos High’s Mike Peterson.
In the championship game, pitching proved to be the difference. The Titans’ tired arms didn’t have it and the NorCal All-Stars - who added three new hurlers prior to the tourney - did.
“They had the fresh arms at the end and they came up through an easier bracket,” Salter said of NorCal, a team the Titans trounced in June at the AAU Pacific Region Championships. “But I don’t want to take anything away from them - they can really swing the bat.”
West Bay trailed 4-3 entering the sixth, then NorCal exploded for four runs to take control.
The Titans, who finished seventh in the 14-and-under division of last year’s national tourney, hope to make another run at the championship next summer in the 16-and-under bracket.
With a pitching rotation of Davis, Stringer and St. Francis’ Chris Coleman and hitters like Descalso and Fuerst - the team’s top batter for the week - West Bay certainly seems capable of generating future memorable moments.
