Baseball: Monrovia Sneaks Past Temple City in 11 innings

It was a game that featured dominant pitching performances for both Monrovia and Temple City. There were big hits, key defensive stops and plenty of clutch performances — the kind you’d expect to see in a clash between the top two teams in the Rio Hondo League. 

And that’s what made the ending all the more perplexing. With Monrovia shortstop Nick Bueno standing at third base after a leadoff triple in the bottom of the 11th, Jairo Jiorge chopped a pitch from Temple City’s Calvin Copping high off home plate. At first the ball harmlessly arced foul, but its trajectory soon curved back toward the field, and when the ball finally hit the ground, it settled right on the chalk line. Fair ball.

Amidst the chaos, Bueno easily crossed home plate to give the Wildcats a 2-1 extra-inning win in a game that lasted 2 hours and 49 minutes Tuesday afternoon.

“We were screaming to let it go foul, and then it got held on the chalk,” Temple City coach Barry Bacon said. “(Home plate umpire Chris) McNeise made the right call, and there's nothing we can do about it. And we're probably not going to get Bueno at the plate anyway because he's going on contact.

“It was a correct call. It's a funky way to lose the game. It's never happened to me in 14 years. It's just interesting that such a well-pitched game ends on a nubber, but someone had to win.”

Up until that inning, the story of the game was the lights out performances by both the Monrovia and Temple City pitching staffs. Monrovia starter Kevin Shue threw 108 pitches in six-plus innings, striking out six and giving up just one unearned run on three hits.

Shue was able to wiggle his way out of jams in the first, third, fourth and sixth innings by hammering away at the Rams (6-3, 1-1 in the Rio Hondo League) with pitches low in the strike zone. 

"I told (Kevin) Shue he pitched a great game,” Bacon said.

Shue’s counterpart on the mound, Corey Copping, was equally unhittable. He took advantage of an overly aggressive Monrovia lineup, getting ahead in counts as the Wildcats swung at the first pitch in nearly every at-bat.

Copping induced a key double play to escape the second inning unscathed, and then left Monrovia’s James Heineman stranded at third base when he got Luis Mercado to ground out to end the fourth. 

“It's a Monrovia-Temple City game,” Monrovia coach Dave Moore said. “We knew going in that they have a very good pitching staff, and they have arms that we all know about. We know that it's just a matter of scrapping, and doing what you can do.”

The way each starter pitched, it seemed that one run would be enough to eke out a win, and Temple City finally broke through in the top of the seventh.

Against a tiring Shue, who was up to 98 pitches after six frames, the Rams’ Jonah Jarrard reached base on a Bueno error to start the inning. Julian Jarrard’s bunt single put runners on first and second with no outs, and Monrovia (6-4-1) replaced Shue with Carl Daniels.

Daniels immediately got into trouble when his pickoff attempt at first base sailed past an unsuspecting Joe Mata, allowing both runners to advance.

Temple City then took a 1-0 lead on Calvin Copping’s RBI groundout. But Daniels was able to avoid further damage, leaving the door open for a Monrovia comeback.

And with one out the bottom half of the inning, the Wildcats got the big hit that had eluded them all afternoon. Mata, who went 2-for-4, ripped a double into the right-centerfield gap, and pinch runner Reed Miller later tied the game on a Corey Copping wild pitch.

“Corey absolutely threw great, but we had some bad choices in the seventh inning,” Bacon said. “We dirted the pitch we shouldn't have. So they score on a pass ball, and they score on a nubber to beat us. That tells me I still have an excellent team and an excellent pitching staff.”

Temple City had opportunities to retake in the lead in the eighth, 10th and 11th innings, but each time the Rams stranded a runner in scoring position. 

The Rams’ best chance at a second run came in the eighth when Jonah Jarrard sent a rocket right at Bueno with two outs and a runner at second. At that point in time Bueno had already made three errors in the game, but this time Bueno smothered the ball with his glove and made a strong throw to first for the third out.

Three innings later, Bueno’s momentum carried over to the plate, as he hit the triple that set up with Wildcats’ winning run.

“He's probably one of the toughest mentally kids that we have,” Moore said. “He's been in it, and we have no questions at all that he's going to come up gold when we need him to."