COLUMBIA BASIN COLLEGE WINS NWAACC BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP.
[May-31-2006]
Courtesy of the Tri City Herald.
LONGVIEW -- It won't appear on ESPN as an Instant Classic today, but that's only because the cameras weren't there.
Columbia Basin College and Lower Columbia College played 23 innings of pressure-packed baseball with neither team ready to concede in even the dimmest of situations in their quest for the NWAACC title.
After seven hours of close calls, it was a Nick Cejka single that was the difference, and sent the Hawks home happy after a tournament that was prolonged by rain.
Cejka took Paul Dickey's 1-0 pitch up the middle to score Steve Marquardt in the top of the 12th inning as the Hawks won the NWAACC championship with a 6-5 victory Tuesday night, capping a record-breaking season for CBC.
It was the Hawks' first title since 2001, and they posted an NWAACC-record 45 wins on the season.
"The trip home is going to be a little easier today," CBC coach Scott Rogers said. "Just because we won the deal; the grass is greener, the sky is bluer. Life is good."
CBC (45-12) came into Tuesday needing just one win to clinch the title. But the Hawks squandered several scoring opportunities and wasted a masterful effort by pitcher Forrest Rice in a 1-0 11-inning loss in the opener to force a decisive game.
There, CBC and the defending champion Red Devils punched and counter punched for 12 innings.
Cejka gave the Hawks a 5-4 lead in the top of the 10th inning with an RBI single up the middle to score Sean Sloppy.
Lower Columbia answered back in the 10th when Johan Hobson was credited with single to score Ben Greenslitt to tie the game at 5.
The Red Devils appeared to have their straight second title in their grasp in the bottom of the 11th with the bases loaded an no outs. Enter Griffin Webb. Webb escaped the jam with a pair of strike outs and a pop up, giving the Hawks new life, and prolonging the game.
"There is no way we should have dodged that bullet," Rogers said. "It shouldn't have happened."
Marquardt put the Hawks on the board in the first inning with a two-run home run -- his NWAACC leading 12th of the season.
In the first game, Rice went 10 2/3 innings, allowing one run on four hits and struck out four. But he was saddled with the loss when Jordan Esparza came out of the bullpen, and on his first pitch, threw it to the backstop, allowing Garrett Brown to score the game's only run.
"It's hard to come back from that," Rogers said. "They're on Cloud 9, and we just had our hearts broken."
But all that was moot point when Justin Burger flied out to Jon Schlender to end the tournament and started a dogpile around the pitcher's mound nearly four hours later.
