La Cueva wins championship on two hits in the seventh inning

May 18 — It was Friday afternoon when La Cueva High School head baseball coach Gerard Pineda discussed the many different ways his Bears have won games this season.

But he could never have predicted that La Cueva would win the state championship on Saturday night.

And more importantly, he wasn’t there to see it.

Pineda was ejected in the sixth inning. His top-seeded team, trailing No. 3 Cleveland by a run in the seventh inning and down to the final out, rattled off two consecutive bases-loaded hits, and La Cueva improbably won the Class 5A title, 3-2, at Santa Ana Star Field.

“We have won games in different ways, but you don’t win many games like this,” said Pineda.

Where was he when Reid Jacobson came home with the winning run? Out by the UNM tennis courts.

It was a strange ending to a title game, and it was certainly a painful loss for the Storm, who were just shy of securing their first state baseball championship.

A single by Braiden Reynolds, and Jacobson hit by a pitch, gave La Cueva life in the seventh. A balk moved the runners forward by a bag; the Storm then intentionally walked Kaiden Nerhood to load the bases.

Cleveland reliever Joseph Stevenson, who threw several fine innings for the Storm this week, struck out Brayden Likar for the second out.

But he lost the plate. He walked pinch-hitter Connor Baughman to tie the game.

“He just didn’t play his best today,” La Cueva right fielder Evan Lane said of Stevenson.

In the box was La Cueva’s nine-hole hitter, Luke Reiter, the team’s catcher. And he knew Stevenson was having trouble finding the strike zone, so he decided to let him throw strikes.

“That’s exactly what I thought,” Reiter said. “I stepped in, I got a little closer to the dish … if he can beat me, he can beat me. If not, we win.”

He didn’t, and the Bears won.

“We’re going to work on it, one way or another,” Reiter said.

“We’re state champions,” Lane said, “and that’s the way it goes sometimes.”

La Cueva has gone 12-1 in the last 13 finals, giving the Bears a dozen titles.

Cleveland controversially took the lead in the sixth inning.

Cleveland’s Anthony Del Angel hit a fly ball down the right-field line with one out.

Lane, the Bears right fielder, ran a long way and appeared to catch the ball at the line, but his momentum sent him into a fence a few yards away.

The referee ruled the ball was good.

“I thought it was a foul ball,” Pineda said.

Lane said he thought it was gross too.

But that wasn’t it. Pineda argued with the first-base umpire for several minutes. Then he had words with the plate umpire, who threw him out.

Meanwhile, Lane couldn’t hold the ball and fell to the ground. Del Angel ended up at third with a triple. And he scored a moment later on Silas Hilton’s sacrifice fly for a 2-1 lead.

La Cueva scored the game’s first run when Ramon Martinez doubled to left-center field with two outs and scored when Reynolds singled down the right-field line.

The remarkable thing about Reynolds’ single is that it would have been a foul ball if the game had not been disrupted at that moment by a fierce south wind that blew his ball back onto the playing court.

In fact, the game was delayed a minute or two in the first inning by some strong winds that kicked up a huge amount of dust. And while it was windy the rest of the night, it never blew as hard as it did in those few minutes.

Cleveland tied the game in the third inning, thanks in large part to a remarkable at-bat by the Storm’s leadoff hitter, third baseman Jarren Villa.

Standing in the box with runners on first and third with one out, Villa fouled Dylan Blomker’s pitches no fewer than seven times before finally hitting a slow ground ball to shortstop. The ball wasn’t hit hard enough to make a double play, but it did manage to score Gabe Nelson from third.