Spanish River Edges Past Santaluces In Extras

Just Tworek pitched seven innings while allowing only two runs and striking out eight.

When Spanish River and Santaluces met Friday night in the championship game of the GGI Spring Break Baseball Classic there was a guarantee that a new champion would be crowned. Atlantic and Forest Hill, the previous two champions of the event, both lost during the week and were eliminated from title game contention. That paved the way for the Chiefs and the Sharks to battle for the 2014 crown.

And battle they did. The two teams battled back and forth all night trading runs, hits, and strikeouts for most of the night. They even needed extras to determine a winner as Spanish River came out ahead with a 4-3 victory and the 2014 GGI Baseball Classic title.

“What a great high school baseball game,” Sharks Manager William Harvey said. “A lot of us, a lot of them, a lot of great plays both offensively and defensively by both teams. It was like a boxing match. We went 12 rounds and had to wait until the 15th to get the knock out punch.”

The game certainly had a feel of a heavyweight boxing match. Both teams traded “jabs” back and forth for the entire night. Both starters went through the first three innings without much drama before surrendering runs in the fourth.

Spanish River won that round outscoring their opponent 2-1 in the fourth inning thanks to a sacrifice bunt for an RBI by second baseman Devon Bard and smart base running by Spencer Diaz and scoring on a fielding error by the Santaluces second baseman.

Santaluces would even things up in the fifth inning when Chiefs first baseman scored on a fielding error by Spanish River. From there both pitchers locked it down.

Santaluces starter Justin Tworek pitched seven innings and allowed only those two runs while striking out eight. On the other side, Sharks starter Chui Slootsky went seven innings as well and just like his opponent only allowed two runs as well to keep his team in the game.

“We were struggling with the bats early and they were throwing a good pitcher in Tworek,” Slootsky said. “We have seen him before and knew we could hit him but we had to get that one big hit and so my mentality is we are just one hit away.”

The Spanish River bench celebrates after the go-ahead home run by Diaz in the eighth.

Spanish River truly was only one hit away and it came down to the eighth inning when that hit finally arrived.

Diaz, with a runner on first, came to bat with two outs in the top half of the eighth. Down to his final strike, he connected with a breaking ball that didn’t break and drove it deep over the left field fence for a two run home run.

“I had been hitting the fastball pretty well lately so I knew I was going to get a breaking ball and I just hit it.” Diaz said.

The Chiefs put one run up in the bottom of the eighth but it wasn’t enough as Spanish River came away with the victory.

Despite the loss, Santaluces can hang their heads high with their runner up finish. The Chiefs had gotten off to a slow start at the beginning of the season and the week of solid play has turned things around for Manager Nick Franco and his team just in time for the second half of the season.

“We were playing very poorly two weeks ago,” Franco said. “We started the season very poor but we had a good week and we are back to where I thought we would be playing at the start of the year. For whatever reason it just didn’t click at the beginning of the year but this whole tournament we did a good job hitting and are starting to score some runs. I can build off of this week and the kids can build off this week.”

Harvey and his team will look to feed off of this win and take it with them into the second half of the season.

“A week like this will give us something to feed off of,” Harvey said. “Our kids will feed off of this and say hey we are supposed to come back and win games.”

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