The Foresters’ offense delivered a spectacular performance one last time for their fans at Pershing Park before the team headed to Wichita to defend its National Baseball Congress World Series title.
Greg Pace went 4 for 4 with a homer and four RBIs, powering the Foresters to a 12-5 win over the San Luis Obispo Blues in their California Collegiate League season finale.
Now comes the NBC World Series, where the Foresters will be seeking a fourth straight title.
After going 30-10 (25-10 in the CCL) during the regular season, Manager Bill Pintard is impressed how this squad’s versatility and drive helped it deal with a rash of injuries.
“They have more grit than any other team I’ve had,” he said. “I’ve never had a team with so many injuries and so many pitchers off a roster.
“We had position players come in and pitch, and pitch at a high level. They just picked up our team. When it came down to it, they made big pitches, and we got big runs. A lot of games were close and hard-fought. And when they were hard-fought, we won that fight. There’s a lot of fight in this team.”
The Blues opened the scoring in Sunday’s contest, as Kody Darcy’s single drive in Jason Hanson.
The Foresters responded with four runs. Rylan Galvan’s sacrifice fly brought home Daniel Patterson, Pace singled in Rocco Garza-Gongora, Nate Voss scored on a wild pitch, and Max Belyeu drove in Pace with a single.
The Foresters put up another four runs in the fourth inning, thanks to a pair of two-run home runs from Pace and Will Rogers.
Pace, who’s been on a roll lately, finished a double shy of hitting for the cycle.
“It’s just the attitude. It’s not a physical adjustment, more of a mental adjustment to continue to go out there and have fun and play the game the way it’s meant to be played,” said the outfielder from Michigan, who has also pitched in a few games.
The Blues scored in the sixth and seventh innings to fight their way back to a 9-5 scoreline.
The Foresters picked up three more runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to put the game away. Garza-Gongora came around to score on an error on Galvan’s ground ball, and Galvan scored on Pace’s triple. Max Belyeu’s RBI ground-rule double completed the scoring.
Starting pitcher Carson Turnquist went four innings and allowed one run. Michael Lombardi pitched the next three innings and gave up four runs. Jackson Cloud and Patterson each pitched one scoreless inning to close out the game.