The last remaining all-star baseball team alive this summer plays its final game tonight in California.
Fallon’s 12-and-under all-stars are 0-3 in pool play of the Cal Ripken Pacific Southwest regional tournament at Riverway Sportspark in Visalia, Calif., and will take on Riverton (northern Utah) tonight at 5 p.m. to conclude the round.
Only the top two teams in each of the two pods advance to the singe-elimination bracket.
Hawaii and Central California are each 3-0 in the Billy Ripken Pool and faced each other on Thursday. Northern California (1-1) and Northern Utah (0-2) played each other on Thursday, as well, while Fallon (0-3) had a bye. Results were not available at press time.
Fallon opened the tournament with humbling losses to northern California and Hawaii earlier this week. The Woodland, Calif., squad defeated Fallon, 13-2, on Monday and Hawaii, which appears to be the favorite to win the regional and advance to the World Series, won 19-1 over Fallon on Tuesday.
“(We were) facing good pitchers and we are committing too many errors and walks,” Fallon coach James Richardson said. “On a positive, some of our players are playing well at this level of competition. We need to work better as a team.”
Fallon’s most competitive outing came Wednesday night against Hanford (central California) when Shaw Lee smacked a two-run homer to draw Fallon to within five (7-2) in the fifth inning. Matt Davis, an 11-year-old, pitched into the fifth inning for Fallon but Hanford came back in the inning with five runs to enforce the mercy rule for a 12-2 victory.
On the bigger diamond, Fallon’s 13-15 all-stars won their first game at the Babe Ruth state tournament at South Tahoe last weekend.
After beating Sun Valley, 17-3, Fallon lost to South Reno, 10-4, and then saw South Tahoe come back with a five-run seventh inning to steal a 14-10 victory and eliminate Fallon from the double-elimination tournament. South Reno won the tournament over South Tahoe.
“The team was fantastic all around the whole weekend, especially having 13 and 14 year olds in a 15-year-old all-star tournament,” Fallon assistant coach Danny Bright said. “We just couldn’t capitalize when the opportunity was there. Kids played hard every game.”
For the weekend, JoJo Hill had two singles, a triple and four RBIs while Logan Smith performed well behind the plate, throwing out five runners and tagging four out at the plate. Colton Moretto contributed with a bases-clearing double. Trevor Wuth was dominant at the plate, as well, going 6-for-11 with two doubles.