Davenport Drops Title Game To Desales

B baseball

Somebody call the Securities Exchange Commission. The DeSales Irish have a monopoly on Washington State B baseball championships.

Saturday at Seafirst Stadium, DeSales beat Davenport 8-3 to win its fifth straight state crown. It was Davenport’s first trip to state.

DeSales, a Catholic school in Walla Walla, won its title despite having no seniors and just two juniors. On Saturday, four out of DeSales’ nine starters were freshman.

“It’s a credit to the school and the parents who make the financial sacrifices to send their kids to school here,” DeSales coach Kim Cox said. In his 12 years at DeSales, Cox has coached the Irish to six state championships.

The game began as a pitching duel, with DeSales’ Joe Levens and Davenport’s Dean Doucette matching shutouts for three innings.

DeSales took a 2-0 lead in the top of the fourth when Pat Barry drove an 0-2 pitch from Doucette to the left-field wall for a double, scoring Kris Wolfram and Jeremy Lilwall.

Davenport got a run back in its half of the fourth when Jeremiah Bailey singled to drive in Tyson Deal. Deal had gotten on base with a walk, then moved to second on a sacrifice bunt. He reached third on the same play when he realized DeSales had no one covering the base. Two innings later, Davenport’s hopes for the crown ended when DeSales pushed across three runs with help of three Gorilla errors to make the score 5-1.

After Davenport’s Mark Goodman homered in the bottom of the seventh to cut the deficit to 5-2, DeSales scored three more runs to put the game out of reach.

Davenport committed another error in the inning and finished with five on the day.

“I thought Dean pitched his heart out,” Davenport coach Terry King said. “But I think there were innings we could have helped him out.”

Although DeSales entered the game having won four straight titles, King said he didn’t believe his Gorillas were intimidated or nervous.

“We were loose, I just think their pitcher had a great game,” King said.

Levens, a sophomore left-hander, surrendered just four hits against Davenport.

“I can’t complain though,” King said. “It was a wonderful, wonderful season for us. These guys gave it everything.”

, DataTimes