Catcher Stewart leads the Dons in feasting on Cougar’s pitching.
What little hope the Campolindo JV had to salvage a split in the week’s series went up like smoke up a chimney in the bottom of the second inning Thursday afternoon off Pleasant Hill Road. Jasper Stewart led off the inning with a double down the left field line, A.J. Hastings, Zach Birrell, and Tommy Terhar added singles, and Josh Lee added a sacrifice fly, and Brady Wall brought another in with a ground ball, and it was 5-0 Dons.
Starting pitcher Brady Wall was efficient, only needing 32 pitches in the first three innings to retire nine of the first ten Cougars that came to the plate. A few unearned runs leaked across in the next couple of innings, but by the time Wall exited after five innings, he was the pitcher of record in line for the win, comfortably ahead 10-4. His final line was five innings pitched, four hits, one walk, six strikeouts and one earned run.
By that time Jasper Stewart had ordered himself a 6×6, Animal Style. For those of you not familiar with math or hamburgers, that’s pretty much three Double Doubles. His second and third doubles had the Campo left fielder turning and running to the wall, the second one thwacking the bottom of the wall, and all three doubles saw Stewart run out from underneath his helmet as he upshifted between first and second bases, a la Willie Mays. A.J. Hastings mirrored this week’s forecast and stayed hot with a couple of singles. Zach Birrell also tallied two hits for the Dons in their last home game of the season.
The Dons brought it home with the relief efforts of Reid Martin and Brendan Miles in the sixth and seventh respectively before staying classy with handshakes with their foes from Moraga and then enjoying some evening barbecue with teammates, coaches, and families.
The Dons outhit the Cougars 10-5 and stole five bases. They look to extend the week’s appetite for offense Friday when they travel to Orinda for the season finale against the Matadors of Miramonte.