Wildcats win on a homer over Saints, then celebrate in style, 5-4-11
Mount Si’s baseball team came into last Wednesday’s game battling their first losing string of the season, with the primary issue being offensive struggles. And while that remained a factor, the Wildcats were able to mount a late rally and get themselves back into the win column.
Tim Proudfoot’s walk-off homer in the eighth broke a 2-2 tie and sent Mount Si to a thrilling 3-2 victory over an Interlake Saints team that for much of the game had shut down the Wildcat bats.
“As the season progresses we obviously expect teams to be better than we played them the first time and that’s a quality team right there,” said Mount Si coach Elliott Cribby, offering praise for an Interlake team which, based on the performance of their pitching especially, looks like a formidable contender in the West Central 2A playoffs, which the Saints will be a part of.
Interlake scored twice in the fifth to break a scoreless tie against Mount Si starter Trevor Taylor, who prior to that point had only given up three hits while striking out a couple. Taylor finished with a solid six innings, giving up just four hits and striking out four. The Wildcats rebounded in the sixth. Proudfoot singled, then advanced to second on a passed ball. After stealing third, he was able to score as Interlake’s catcher threw the ball into left field. Mount Si’s catcher, Robb Lane, did something similar in the fifth to help the Saints score one of their two runs. The Wildcats’ Max Brown also scored a run in the sixth; he walked then stole second. Brown later crossed the plate to tie the game 2-2.
Wildcat reliever Hudson Luxich shut down the Interlake bats in the seventh, then again in the eighth, setting up Proudfoot’s heroics in the bottom of the frame. With the count 1-1, “I was thinking he’s going to go at me with a curveball because I know he can throw it for a strike, but I’m going to look for fastball and sit on a curveball and it turned out to be a curveball,” Proudfoot said, and he proceeded to rip said curveball over the fence in left center to give Mount Si the come-from-behind win.
Following the game, Luxich and his teammates celebrated the win by helping the senior pitcher invite a girl to the upcoming Mount Si prom, May 21 at Union Station in Seattle. The young lady, sophomore Kim Anderson, was in attendance, and she and other Mount Si fans saw the team unfurl a banner in which Luxich offered the invitation. “Well, I was trying to figure out a way to ask her for awhile, just something creative, something good because it was prom and I just wanted to have fun,” he said. Anderson accepted the invitation, and the two of them will for sure have a special night. Hopefully made more special after a playoff win that weekend; state regionals will be May 21.
To get there, Mount Si will need to win two games at the Kingco Tournament. This begins next Thursday with a game against either Mercer Island or Liberty at 7:00 p.m.
