CdA beats Lake City
The one thing for sure in Inland Empire League baseball this season is that nothing’s for sure.
Coeur d’Alene High used the long ball Thursday, belting four home runs to notch an 11-5 victory over visiting Lake City, the Vikings’ first win in four meetings this season over their cross-town rivals.
The loss knocked the Timberwolves (15-8, 8-4 IEL) out of first place by one in the win column behind idle Lewiston (12-6, 9-4). The win pulled Coeur d’Alene (14-6, 8-5) to within one in the loss column behind Lake City.
The three teams are vying for the all-important No. 1 seed for the 5A Region I tournament, which brings with it a first-round bye and a home date against the winner of the May 9 No. 2-at-No. 3 loser-out opening-round game.
Lake City travels to Lewiston Saturday for a season series-ending doubleheader. Both teams have one league game remaining after Saturday. Coeur d’Alene, which has two league games remaining, is done for the regular season against LC and Lewiston.
CdA coach Brian Holgate was all smiles after the win.
“The big thing is we finally broke through against these guys,” Holgate said.
“We added it up and we had left 24 baserunners on in the previous three games and today we did a good job of knocking guys in, so hats off to our guys for coming through when we needed them.”
Thursday’s contest, played in a steady wind blowing out , was closer than the final score would indicate.
Tied at 1 after two innings, Vikings senior first baseman Mike Estrada led off the bottom of the third with a 400-foot-plus, opposite-field bomb to right-center off LC starter Brady Capaul.
Two outs later, after a Logan Wadsworth double, lefty-batting senior second baseman Nic Duman knocked one nearly as long, putting the Viks up 4-1 with a high homer to the same part of the park.
Lake City had things going in the top of the fourth, pulling to 4-2 on K.C. McDonald’s one-out RBI single, but the Vikings turned a double play two batters later to kill the rally.
CdA took advantage of a costly LC error in the bottom of the fourth, when with two outs Estrada again took Capaul deep, this time with a rocket to left-center that scored Max Lyons and put the T-Wolves up 6-2.
“I just went out there and tried clearing my mind, because I haven’t been hitting the ball too well,” Estrada said of his eventual game-winning big fly. “He threw me a hanging curveball and I was just hoping for a base hit.
“But it ended up going big.”
Lake City got a big chunk back in the fifth, capitalizing on a pair of hit-batsmen and a walk and pulling to within one at 6-5 on senior catcher Travis Harmon’s three-run triple.
A check-swing call on a third strike and a base-running blunder killed another bases-loaded LC rally in the sixth.
Then Wadsworth erased any doubt about the outcome in CdA’s half of the inning, stepping to the plate with the bases loaded and delivering his first home run of the season and the first grand slam of his career.
“It surprised me – I didn’t think I was going to hit it out,” Wadsworth said. “I was just going hard trying to make it to second base.
“It felt pretty good, because we hadn’t beat Lake City yet.”
Estrada added his feelings about what the win meant to him and his teammates.
“It was a big game for us – oh, wow, it’s huge,” Estrada said. “It feels so good to finally get that victory over them.
“It was a big game for momentum, and now it’s back to business.”
LC coach Cory Bridges, without the services of leadoff man, center fielder, top pitcher and team sparkplug Cory Kreighbaum, who was out with a shoulder injury, remained upbeat despite the loss.
“At least they can’t complain about leaving guys on base – we’ve left just as many, I think,” Bridges said, adding that Kreighbaum, due for an MRI next week, will likely miss the rest of the regular season, if not longer. “It was a good ballgame – we ran ourselves out of an inning that could have changed the momentum of the ballgame immensely.
“But we’re fine; we’ve just had a couple of hiccups.”