SANTA ANA, Calif. – Santa Ana baseball battled the weather and the College of the Desert Roadrunners in the second game of their series on Thursday afternoon.
In the fourth inning, umpires were forced to delay the game for approximately one hour due to lightning and rain. The teams decided to play as much as possible, knowing they would run out of daylight before reaching nine innings.
The Roadrunners held a 5-3 lead before the delay, but the Dons began to eat into that in the fifth when Grant Askins doubled off the left field fence to bring in Raymond Villanueva.
After reliever Jack Owens blanked COD in the top of the sixth, Santa Ana continued its climb back with another run from an Askins single to tie the game at 5-5.
College of the Desert seemed to be heading home with at least a tie game as they worked their way out of the sixth and retired the first two batters in the bottom half of the seventh inning. But Santa Ana Head Coach Tom Nilles made the move to insert Frank Garcia to pinch hit with two outs, which turned out to be the difference in the game.
Garcia made the most of his opportunity, as he connected on a fastball that carried over the left field fence to give the Dons a 6-5 advantage after trailing for most of the day. Celebration
The Roadrunners were given one more shot to even things up, but Cade Nash and Joel Casillas partnered up to shut things down in the last inning.
Jack Owens earned his first win with 3.1 critical shutout innings to go along with three strikeouts. And Grant Askins had another good day with two hits and a couple of RBI's for the Dons.
With the win, Santa Ana is now 8-3 overall while COD falls to 2-12 with the loss.
IMPACT PLAYS
Starting catcher Copper Hansen made some huge plays for the Dons behind the plate, throwing out two would-be base stealers and picking off a runner at first to end the game.
UP NEXT
On Saturday, the Dons will finish their game against the East LA Huskies that was halted on Wednesday with the scoring being 1-1 in the 12th inning. The action will begin at 12:00 p.m. and will be followed with another full game against the Huskies.