The Acalanes Freshman Baseball team delivered an early Mother’s Day present, beating El Cerrito 6-3 in game 1 and 6-2 in game 2. The origins of Mother’s Day dates back to the Ancient Greeks, who, in their spring festival, celebrated the goddess Rhea, considered the mother of the Gods. But I digress…back to the games.
Game 1 was a hard-fought contest. Each team registered 7 hits and only 1 error on defense. The game was tight until the bottom of the 5th inning when the Dons managed to score 3 runs. Jake Colaco and Cruz Lopez led the team with 2 hits each, and Jake also knocked in David Gonzales 3 times in the contest.
David Roux, Cole Gwaltney, and Hank Bauer also collected hits in the game. The Dons were able to take advantage of 7 walks issued by the El Cerrito pitchers in Game 1, including a 7-pitch battle by Jake Megibow that including him wedging a foul ball in the top of the backstop.
Cruz Lopez got the start on the mound, giving up 3 runs on 6 hits and 1 walk with 4 Ks in 5 innings of work. He was followed by Hank Bauer, who pitched 2 innings giving up no runs on 1 hit and 1 walk.
I had to miss Game 2, but I am thinking something must be wrong with GameChanger as the Dons managed to score 6 runs on 2 hits. In addition to the hits from Ben Pecci and Cole Gwaltney, 4 free passes for the Dons (3 walks and 1 HBP) and sloppy defense by El Cerrito (5 errors) certainly helped the cause. David Gonzales pitched a gem, going 6 innings while giving up 1 run on 3 hits with no walks and 8 Ks. He was followed by Cole Gwaltney, who gave up 2 hits and 1 run in the last inning.
Get to know Coach: JJ’s favorite MLB player is Brandon Crawford, and his favorite vacation spot is Paris. Coincidentally, the moms I interviewed gave the same responses to those questions.
Lastly, I wanted to give shout-outs to all the moms who have come to cheer on their sons and grandsons all season, drove carpools, provided snacks, and raised such great young men. Special thanks to Mendy for being the team mom, Suzanne for taking pictures for these articles, Jennie for organizing the SignUp genius events, Christine for hosting the pasta feed, Tomi for helping with the pasta feed, Katie for agreeing to host the end of season party and wearing the best hat, Kerin for organizing carpools and sharing laminated lineup cards, Leilani for teaching the junior beat writers how to catch a lizard, Kim for BBQing and wearing her high school cheer jacket, Luisa for posing with Brendan’s broken glove, Marci for also helping with pictures and contributing one of the junior beat writers, Jane for posting these articles, and Michele for taking our junior beat writer to her activities so I could attend and write about these games.
I also wanted to give a shout-out to my mom, even though her selection of my baseball uniform as a young kid on the St. Luke’s tee-ball team circa 1979 may have left something to be desired.
The team plays it last games of the season on the road Friday and Saturday against Clayton Valley. FEAR THE BLUE!