Ben Etzell whiffed 15 Cedarcrest batters Monday. (Shelli Trumbull photo)
If there weren’t children reading this blog, this is where we would put the profanity…
On an absolutely perfect day for baseball on the prairie Monday, with sun, blue skies, no wind — real shirt sleeves, almost feel like it’s July kind of weather — the Coupeville High School baseball team came 99.9% of the way to grabbing a season-defining win.
But it didn’t.
Ben Etzell was all kinds of nasty on the mound, striking out 15 Cedarcrest batters over eight super-sized innings, but his team’s inability to put together an offensive charge of their own left him high and dry, sitting on the bench in the ninth, only able to watch as the Wolves fell 1-0.
The extra-innings loss, coming at the hands of the biggest 2A school in the Cascade Conference, was Coupeville’s fourth straight.
After jumping out to a 3-1 start to the season, the 1A Wolves (now 3-5 overall, 2-5 in league play) have gone deadly cold at the plate against the league’s top two 2A teams.
Coupeville garnered just one run in a three-game sweep by Archbishop Thomas Murphy, and were shutout for the third straight game Monday.
The Wolves had a beautiful chance in the bottom of the sixth to break the scoreless streak and give Etzell the lead heading out to win the game in the 7th.
Morgan Payne led off with a long single to left, the team’s first hit since an Aaron Trumbull single in the second. Unfortunately, he was quickly picked off.
Undaunted, Coupeville juiced the bags on a single from Wade Schaef, having Etzell plunked (the second of three times the senior was nailed by a pitch at the plate) and then getting an infield single from Jake Tumblin, whose speed flustered Cedarcrest’s shortstop into making a hurried throw.
It wasn’t to be, however, as the visitors went to the bullpen and their reliever went all Mariano Rivera on the Wolves, whiffing Trumbull and Aaron Curtin with straight heat.
The two teams kept the scoreless tango going through the regulation seven innings and on into extra time.
Tumblin gunned down a Cedarcrest runner at second in the eighth, off of a pitch-out craftily called by CHS coach Willie Smith.
The Red Wolves responded right back, with their center-fielder, who had been limping, chasing down a moon ball launched by Tumblin in the bottom half of the inning.
Seriously favoring one leg afterwards, he was removed by his coach and dragged his leg into the dugout, slamming his mitt off the bench as his teammates and fans cheered his gutsy play.
In a game where one play was all it was going to take to win, Cedarcrest finally found the right combo in the top of the ninth.
With Etzell having been pulled after tossing close to 120 pitches, Schaef came on in relief. After a walk and a strikeout, he gave up a booming double to Cedarcrest’s #9 hitter, then a sac fly to straight-away center for the game’s only run.
Coupeville had one final shot at redemption in the ninth.
Curtin led off by smashing a shot to the wall in left, but the Cedarcrest outfielder made a spectacular diving, rolling catch for the out.
Maybe.
Since his back was to the field when he went down, it was hard to tell if he really caught it or merely trapped it, and when he raised the ball, it was in his OTHER HAND, not his glove hand.
Did he flip it from glove to throwing hand, or pick it up off the ground?
The second base ump stayed firm to his call that it was a catch, while the crowd, spurred on by rabid super fan Brian Norris, booed lustily while Willie Smith had an animated chat with the home plate ump.
Down to their final out, the Wolves got a spark from sophomore Cole Payne, who whacked a hit to right and scooted to second when the ball went between the fielder’s legs.
With the tying run at second, Kurtis Smith spanked a hard chopper off the infield dirt and came within a step of beating the throw to keep the game alive.
Cedarcrest’s first baseman was just long enough to outstretch the speedy Wolf senior, however, the ball disappearing into his mitt a fraction of a heartbeat before Smith’s foot hit the bag.
Coupeville travels to Duvall Wednesday for a rematch, then welcomes Cedarcrest back to Whidbey Friday. After that, the league opponents left on the schedule start getting easier.
If nothing else, Etzell’s performance will go down as one of the better ones seen on the CHS diamond.
He recorded his first six outs via the strikeout and whiffed at least one batter in each of his eight innings. Willie Smith couldn’t say off the top of his head whether the 15 K’s were a school record, but they are certainly the most in recent memory.
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