Sinner’s walk-off single propels Wildcat baseball to key win over Lake Washington, 4-15-11
Mount Si’s baseball team has been very dominant throughout the season, so the challenge for this team now is finding an opponent that will give them a good game. Yesterday saw exactly that, and once again, the Wildcats responded.
Nate Sinner’s single scored Trevor Lane with the winning run in the bottom of the seventh, breaking a 1-1 tie and lifting Mount Si to a hard-fought 2-1 win over Lake Washington, pushing the Wildcats two games in front of the Kangs for the league lead. Tim Proudfoot homered again, his fifth on the week and seventh on the season.
“We can’t beat everybody 13-3, 11-0 and you’re going to run up against some good teams like Lake Washington,” said Mount Si coach Elliott Cribby. “Good club, good defense, good pitching and we just had it on our side today.”
It was a pitcher’s duel to start between LW’s senior Spencer Jackson and Mount Si junior Reece Karalus; to start the game Karalus struck out seven of the first ten hitters and finished having given up just five hits in six innings, striking out 12. “Felt good out there. I could hit my locations real well; just had to keep it low against them,” Karalus said.
Mount Si broke through in the fourth thanks to the Proudfoot blast. The week he had offensively (he hit .545 with five homers, six RBI’s and eight runs scored) may go down as one of the best individual offensive weeks by any Mount Si player in recent memory. The senior was ready for what Jackson was offering. “On my at-bat I knew (Jackson) was throwing a lot of offspeed (pitches),” Proudfoot said. “I wasn’t looking for a fastball because I knew he wasn’t going to give it to me, so I wasn’t going to look for it, so sure enough, he threw me a couple of offspeed pitches and I waited, got my timing on them and when he threw one that I could hit, I ripped it.”
But Proudfoot also came up big on defense as well. After LW tied the game 1-1 in the sixth on a solo shot by Bob Cruikshank, Proudfoot, playing short, made a great play on a line drive by Kang Zach Johnson, resulting in an out. “That’s a rally killer for sure,” Cribby said, and sure enough, it was, as LW didn’t score any more runs. “Well, I try to play my heart out there. When I’m between the lines, I’m going to give it everything I got,” Proudfoot said.
The game remained tied through the seventh, as Shane Dixon, who came in to relieve Karalus on the mound, was strong, going 1-2-3 in the top of that frame, setting up the winning bottom of the stanza for Mount Si. Lane was hit by a Jackson pitch, then after the Wildcat junior stole second, Max Brown was intentionally walked. Sinner then came up, and on a 1-1 count, he lined the ball into left field. Cribby, who acts as the third-base coach when Mount Si is on offense, signaled for Lane to turn for home at third base, setting up a play at the plate. Lane beat the tag of LW catcher Neil O’Connor and umpires ruled Lane safe to give the Wildcats the victory. “I just knew (Jackson) was going to throw some offspeed and so I just sat on it (and) tapped it into left field,” Sinner said.
Fans and players celebrated a win which could be a season-defining one for this team. Mount Si is at Interlake Monday. Game time is 4:30 p.m.
