-Blade Beat Writer-Central Arizona College Baseball

(Salt Lake City) - Was there ever any doubt?

Sure there was.

It was 2-2 in the bottom of the ninth with Salt Lake Community College up and a man on with only one out. If Salt Lake scores here, Central jumps on 1-15 back home for the summer.

Shane Spencer was the game four starter and he's still in.

In comes pinch-hitter Travis Johnson and it's here where nine-plus innings of work could get to a pitcher. 

The pressure is on.

Seven straight offspeeds/sliders ending with a swing and a miss.

Thank you sir, that will be all.

Spencer came back again for his tenth inning after Central had scored two in the top, and made it look easy.

Twelve strikeouts in ten innings, one walk, six hits.

Incredible.

With a large hats-off to SLCC starter Ernesto Lugo-Canchola who held the Central batting lineup to only two runs in seven and two-thirds. Prior to this game, CAC had scored forty six runs in just three games.

Central Arizona wins the first game of the day 4-2 in ten, and now it was just win the second game and qualify for the JUCO World Series.

With Salt Lake leading 3-2 after four and a half innings, CAC scored nine runs in the bottom of the fifth to go up 11-3. Another huge inning, like the ten-spot Central put up in the eighth inning of game one in the 22-16 win.

Daniel Davila, Central's fifth starter in three days threw a decent two and a third, and it was Sam Rochard finishing off the Bears in the final six and a third to get the Vaqueros a 12-4 win, and off they go.

Kiko Romero hit his sixth homerun of the series in this finals game, no question the West District MVP.

Romero totaled fourteen rbi's, and in the one game of five where he didn't hit a homerun, he walked three times and scored three times. He ended up with a .556 batting average.

Wow. 

But wait! There's more.

Jaylin Rae hit .480, outfielder Tyrese Johnson hit .600.

Central scored sixty-two runs in it's forty-three innings of the five games it played.

The team batting average as a whole was .473. The team hit almost .500 (.478) in the elimination game against Southeasern of Nebraska.

But back to Johnson, he had been primarily a spot player and the number one pinch-runner all this year until this West District tournament. There's almost no greater joy as a coaching staff watching a part-time player (if that) step up in games of this magnitude.

These tournaments are very, very tough, in one way, because you use your pitching staff differently than in the regular season. This tournament was not Woessner-Spencer-Heaton-Steitz as in the first fifty-six games.

It went Tyler Woessner, Matt Wilkinson, Patrick Steitz, Spencer, and Davila.

And it seems so long ago that Steitz threw that beauty as a starter in must-win game number three. 

Tyson Heaton and Sam Rochard did valuable relieving, and Central used all relievers, no starters in the second game.

Post-season is a whole new ballgame baby.

"That squad is a very tough team to coach against, they have all the layers you need" said head coach Anthony Gilich.

"They have speed, smarts, power, pitching...it was really tough against them. Every player and every pitch we battled for."

The JUCO World Series is a ten-team tournament, and it should be said again. It's a deep pitching staff, and where they are put, that makes all the difference.

And the beauty of it all is, you never know who this years' Dakota Donovan, Darryl Knowles or Mitchell Decovitch could be. Spencer also, was a warrior in last year's final game start.

A team that hits .473 could be percieved as a difference-maker too.

We'll see!! 

Central Arizona College, until last year, had not ever been to the JUCO two years in a row, and now it's three.

We'll see everyone in Grand Junction.