Larks see year come to end
August 15, 2003
By NICK SCHWIEN
Hays Daily News
WICHITA — Sometimes you need a little luck, no matter how good you are.
The Hays Larks didn’t seem to have an ounce of luck on their side in this year’s 69th annual National Baseball Congress World Series.
Just ask Dan Schwartzbauer, the shortstop on Hays’ summer collegiate baseball team.
“We might have been the best team in this tournament, and we’re not in it any more,” he said. “We just didn’t catch any breaks and didn’t get the luck at the right time.”
The Larks’ season came to an abrupt halt Thursday night in the quarterfinals with a 3-2 loss to the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Foresters. Hays finished in a fifth-place tie with the Havasu (Ariz.) Heat.
It was the Larks’ second loss in the tournament by a single run.
“That happens in the game of baseball,” said Hays manager Frank Leo. “If you stay in this game long enough, those things are going to happen. You look back, and a hit here or there and we probably have no losses in this tournament. We just couldn’t get over that hump. We couldn’t get on a roll and get over it.”
The storyline of the Larks struggling to get a key hit the entire series remained a constant against Santa Barbara. Hays (43-12) stranded runners in eight of the nine innings, five in scoring position.
“That’s two games we’ve lost where they could have gone either way,” said catcher Adam Cox, who went 2-for-4 with an RBI. “We hit the ball hard, just couldn’t seem to find the holes. We didn’t score enough runs.”
That made the team’s second loss that much harder to swallow.
“We hit the ball real hard this tournament, but it seemed like it was right at them the whole time,” said pitcher Tommy Hottovy. “We have a good team, and we did well. But it’s not how we wanted to end it by any means.”
With two outs in the second, Richie Robnett and Nick McCoola hit back-to-back singles off Hays starter Chris Ofat. Both scored on Isaac Omura’s double to give Santa Barbara (50-9) a 2-0 lead.
Hays pulled within 2-1 in the third. Mark Lyons led off the inning with a triple and scored on a one-out single by Shawn Smarsh.
Randy Curtis followed with a single to put runners on first and second. But Cody Ehlers grounded into a double play to end the threat.
“That seemed to be the story of our whole tournament,” said Schwartzbauer, who went 2-for-5 with a double. “We had to overcome not getting the breaks. It’s tough to do that. You need a little bit of luck in baseball, and we didn’t have any.”
The Larks stranded runners at first and second in the fourth and another at third in the fifth before finally knotting the game at 2-2 in the sixth.
Craig Cooper led off the inning with a walk and scored on a two-out double by Cox, who was named to the All-American team — the only Hays player to garner the honor.
Ofat cruised into the eighth after only allowing two hits from the third through the seventh. But the Foresters got things going again with two outs in the eighth.
Kevin Frandsen walked and moved to second on a single by Brett Hayes. Frandsen scored when Billy Susdorf singled to left to give Santa Barbara a 3-2 lead.
Santa Barbara scored all three of its runs with two outs.
“They had good two-out rallies,” Leo said. “They had good hits. We had opportunities with two outs too, but we just couldn’t hit. A soft hit or a blooper, we couldn’t get it. ...”
Cox reached first on an infield single to start the bottom of the ninth, and was lifted for pinch-runner Seth Fortenberry. Fortenberry was sacrificed to second by Lyons, but Schwartzbauer hit a short fly ball to center field and Smarsh struck out to end the game.
Ofat (7-1) lost for the first time this summer. He allowed the three runs — all earned — on seven hits in 72/3 innings, with three walks and three strikeouts.
Hitting woes doomed the Larks, Leo said.
“Disappointment,” he said. “We had our eyes set on playing here Saturday. We just didn’t get the key hits the last few days. That’s the bottom line. Our pitchers did a tremendous job, our defense did a tremendous job. Usually when you have two components, you can win games. But in this tournament when you’re going against good teams, you have to have the third component going too. And we didn’t have it in this tournament.”
Despite the loss, Leo knows the club accomplished a lot during the summer. Hays won the Jayhawk League title for the third consecutive year and finished runner-up at the NBC Midwest Regional.
“When you reflect back … you can think about the whole picture,” Leo said. “But there’s a lot of disappointment we’re not playing another day. But we won three Jayhawk League championships and had another great run in the World Series.
“We’re one of the top six teams in the nation, and we can’t be disappointed there.”