Wall no-hits Baytown Sterling, Wolves cruise in Game 1 of semifinals
Thursday May 22, 2008
Written by Dave Purpura

 

  

 

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One pitching ace was untouchable in Game 1 of the Westside-Baytown Sterling regional semifinal series Thursday night. At one point, he struck out 10 in a row and even contributed three singles, two of them RBI hits.

The other lost his way for the second straight series-opener, was victimized by a lack of control and stormed off the mound facing an insurmountable deficit.

Westside used its trademark smallball game to whittle Baytown Sterling and standout lefthander Hunter Cervenka into submission at Ray Knoblauch Field, and Wolves senior Taylor Wall threw a no-hitter as his team eased to a 7-0 win.

The Wolves (28-3) got six hits, drew seven walks and benefited from two Rangers (29-5) errors. They put the game away with five runs in the fourth inning.

Wall struck out 13 and walked one. The only blemishes were a first-inning error and a dropped third strike that let a runner reach base in the third.

“The middle innings were key; that was when I got in my groove,” Wall said. “I was throwing a lot of strikes, keeping them off balance and getting the lead guy out. That was the game plan. …

“I was fooling them with a bunch of (pitches) but my out pitch was the slider. I was getting them to swing at it and it was breaking hard late.”

Game 2 is at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Sterling. Game 3, if necessary, will be at 2 p.m. Saturday at Pasadena McGuire.

“Taylor Wall pitches. He has a great changeup and if you sit on that, his fastball looks like it’s 95 miles an hour,” Westside coach Emrick Jagneaux said. “He got a great change and he could throw it anytime in the count. He controlled the game.”

Wall’s first hit came in the first, when he singled in Freddy Villalobos.

Three of the Wolves’ walks came in the fourth, when Cervenka unraveled. He walked five of the first six hitters; two runs scored on back-to-back wild pitches and a third was forced home on a bases-loaded walk.

That was the end of the night for Cervenka, who left the mound in frustration and slammed his glove into the dugout wall.

Villalobos singled in Michael Falcone for a 5-0 lead and Garrett Shaw scored the sixth run on a bad throw to first.

“We wanted to put the ball on the ground and bunt guys over and we were fortunate that (Cervenka) got a little wild,” Wall said.

It was the second straight Thursday for at least two surprising trends.

Seven days ago, Bellaire run-ruled Lamar 11-1 here. Simultaneously, Cervenka and a reliever combined to walk 11 and hit another five batters in Sterling’s 12-3 loss to Fort Bend Elkins in Game 1 of that quarterfinal series.

“Everybody gets scouting reports and ours said he gets a little wild sometimes and he gets up in the zone,” Jagneaux said. “We just had to be patient. Someone was gonna make a mistake and we had to capitalize.”

Falcone and Wall sandwiched singles around Sterling’s second error in the sixth to make it 7-0.




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