Mustangs' Bay League Streak Comes to End

The wind was whipping out toward left field, strong enough to send a routine fly ball sailing over the fence for a home run. Couple that with the way that Mira Costa High has mashed the baseball in Bay League play and an epic slugfest certainly fell into the realm of possibility.

In the Mustangs' 3-2 loss at Peninsula on Friday, both teams played to the opposite extreme into extra innings.

Peninsula scored the winning run in the bottom of the eighth on a fielding error by Mira Costa third baseman Kris Cayton and of the nine hits in the game only one produced a run. That was not a bomb or an extra base hit, but a perfectly placed RBI bunt single in the fifth inning by the Panthers' Luke Streeter, which tied the score at 2.

Streeter scored the Panthers' other run on a balk by Mira Costa starter Lucas Whitehill, after reaching base when hit by a pitch and advancing on a sacrifice and a ground ball.

''These kids have some heart and some desire and deep down inside they figured out a way to get this win,'' said Panthers' coach Dennis Gonsalves, who jokingly told his team before the game to just hit the ball 299 ½ feet and the wind would do the rest.

The Mustangs, who had beaten Peninsula 10-0 on Wednesday, didn't have the same success trying to manufacture runs. Mira Costa had averaged 11 runs a game in jumping out to a 5-0 start in the Bay League, but struggled to take advantage of the few scoring opportunities they could muster against Peninsula right-hander Sammy Moore.

Mira Costa put two runs up in the second without a base hit, but went 0 for 6 with a runner in scoring position the rest of the way against Moore and reliever Dillon Rozas.

The Mustangs had a runner at second with one out in the third inning and didn't score, the leadoff batter on base in the fourth and sixth and didn't score, and two runners on with two out in the fifth and could not find a way to push a run across the plate.

''We didn't execute,'' Mustangs coach Cassidy Olson said. ''We didn't do the little things. What I told them after the game is this might be the best thing for us, because when you blow people out you don't have to work on the little things and we're not going to blow good teams out.

''Their guy did a good job of keeping us off-balance. The crazy wind up here, I think it got into our heads a little bit. But when they bunt it right to us, we've got to get the out at second, which we didn't do; when the ball is right at us we have to field it and throw it and catch it. You know, that's what it came down to. I mean, they scored their runs on a balk, a bunt base hit after we gave them third [base] because we threw the ball around and the error on the infield.''

That error in the eighth came after Yuki Takahashi reached base when hit by a pitch from Drew Van Orden and advanced on a fielder's choice and a single to right. Brian Hertzmann then came up and hit a sharp grounder to Cayton, who got a good high hop but appeared to take his eye off the ball for a split second and had it bounce off his glove and away while Takahashi scored.

Despite the loss, the Mustangs (5-1 in league), still control their fate in the league title race with games next week against rival Redondo Union and in two weeks against Palos Verdes.

''Hopefully this will be good for us for the rest of league and into the playoffs,'' Olson said. ''We win the rest of our games, it doesn't matter–9-1 you still win league.

''The other team that's in first, that's ahead of us [Palos Verdes], we control our own destiny. It'd be nice to not have that one loss, but it is what it is.''