COMPTON — Casey McMurray was running at full speed, but the Santa Barbara Foresters aren’t quite up to speed yet in their young season.
McMurray legged out an infield single with two outs in the top of the ninth inning Friday and pinch-runner Michael Liberto eventually came around to score and tie the game at 3-3, but the Foresters ended up losing to the Urban Academy Barons 4-3 in 10 innings down in South Los Angeles.
“That was a huge play, and I thought for sure that it was an indicator that we were going to win this game,” said coach Pat Burns. “We just had a team meeting and chewed them out a bit because this is not really Foresters baseball. We should be beating these teams.”
The six-time defending California Collegiate League champs fell to 9-3 overall and 2-2 in conference play with the loss. Mark Castellito drove in Liberto to tie the game, but hesitated rounding first base and was thrown out trying to stretch it for a double.
“This is a whole new group of guys, and we have to teach them how we play the game,” said Burns. “We were happy to tie, but the situation is that if we play the game right and how we teach players to play, he’d be on second base and we’d still have a guy up there with an opportunity to take the lead.”
Chris Joyce got the start for Santa Barbara and looked sharp until allowing a two-out rally which scored two runs in the fourth inning. He put down the Barons 1-2-3 in both the first and third innings.
“My velo(city) was a little down, but overall I felt pretty good,” said the Dos Pueblos grad and current UCSB Gaucho.
Kevin Dickey pitched the eighth and ninth innings for the Foresters and retired the Barons in order in each, tallying four strikeouts along the way. Sam Spangler, who arrived Thursday from the University of Hawaii, took the mound in the 10th and allowed the winning run to come in.
So far this season, the Foresters pitching and fielding have been solid, but the bats have yet to blossom (Santa Barbara had six hits in the game), and the swagger that the defending national champs should carry has yet to fully arrive, as Burns said the team “is underachieving” thus far as a group.
“It was a tight game so it was fun and everyone was excited at the end, but what would make it really fun is if we didn’t wait for things to happen and had that sort of verve from the start,” he said.
McMurray’s 90-foot sprint was the hustle play of the game, but reigning West Coast Conference Player of the Year James Meador made the throw of the year for the team in the sixth. The University of San Diego star caught a ball back on his heels deep in right field and one-hopped it to catcher Mike Turay to throw out Andrew Allen at home and keep the Barons from going up 4-2.
The Barons (6-4 CCL) pay a visit to Caesar Uyesaka Stadium for a 5 p.m. start Saturday before the teams head back down for a rematch at the pristine MLB Urban Academy complex for the series finale on Sunday.
