Tigers hold on for win
C
ALIPATRIA — The Imperial High baseball team worked to hold off an offensively eager Calipatria High squad to win 9-4 in a nonleague contest here on Friday night.
“We’ve had some good practices, so we felt prepared,” said first-year Tiger head coach Javier Ramos. “We knew Calipat was also going to come out and be ready to compete, so we knew we had to be ready.”
While it’s still early in the season, both teams have returned a solid numbers of players from last year’s squads making Friday’s game a competitive matchup through the first few innings.
Imperial opened up the scoring in the top of third after Manny Rojas connected for a two-run home run driving in himself and lead-off batter Chris Lopez.
Diego Favila then drove in one run with sac fly to give Imperial a 3-0 lead.
“The first couple innings it didn’t really work out for us offensively, but they stayed patient and stayed with it as the game went on,” said Ramos of his players.
Not to be outdone, the Hornets equaled Imperial’s scores in the bottom of the inning, with Marco Perez moving along the bases and scoring on a passed ball and Victor Simon Ortiz knocking in two runs with a standup double.
Imperial would get one run in the top of the fourth from a Kobby Lopez double to take a narrow lead heading into the bottom of the fourth.
The fifth inning proved to be strong one for Imperial as they worked to put four runs on the board off hits from Chris Lopez, Jakob Trujillo and Rojas.
The Hornets answered with a run in the bottom of inning to narrow Imperial’s lead 8-4 with an RBI from Julian Medina.
Imperial then recorded an insurance run in the sixth inning with another RBI from Chris Lopez to go up 9-4.
Tiger hurlers Jonathan Reyes and Alex Duarte then worked to close the game without giving up any more runs to improve Imperial to 4-0.
“They’re working hard and they know where they can contribute to the team, so those roles are getting defined,” Ramos said of the Tigers. “Things are coming along and they know what they need to meet those expectations and get to where we want to be.”