Bonita Squeezed by Controversial Call

Bonita fans cheer a Bearcat rally.

Sure Bonita didn’t make the most of its scoring opportunities — leaving the bases loaded in the second, stranding runners at second and third in the fourth, at first and third in the fifth, at second in the sixth, and first and third in the eighth — but somehow it tied the score 3-3 in the top of the seventh on a solo lead-off home run by Jio Mier that struck the left field foul pole. Mier had battled back from 0-2 count before jerking the 3-2 fastball out of the park. The producers of “The Natural” couldn’t have furnished a better script. Fittingly, Mier came into relieve ace hurler Nico Calderaro with two outs in the bottom of the seventh with the winning run at third base, and promptly struck out South Hills’ Ty France on three strikes.

Then the players stopped writing the script, and the umpires intervened. After Derek Klena led off the bottom of the eighth with a single to center, Richard Rollice attempted a sacrifice bunt that Mier pounced on and rifled to second for the force. With Klena jogging off the field, the middle infield umpire called him back and awarded him second base, ruling that Mier had balked even if no one else on the field, in the dugouts or in the stands or along the fences rimmed with fans had heard the much-delayed call or seen it.

Just a season earlier, also in the third round of the playoffs, with some of the Bonita players already in the dugout after the third out had seemingly been recorded, another infield judge had ruled that a ball had glanced off a Northview batter’s foot for a foul ball, giving the batter new life, although the home plate umpire had not seen or called it. Not even the player whose foot was supposedly struck was limping. Northview went on to score four runs before the (second) third-out was final put in the official scorer’s book, for all intents, ending the game and the season for Bonita.

Nico Calderaro's superb hitting and pitching gave Bonita a chance to win.

Rollice, given new life in the similarly freakish and eerily déjà vu play, tried to sacrifice again, and this time was successful, moving Klena to third. Up came freshman pinch hitter CJ Taylor who squeezed Klena in from third, just eluding a sweeping tag from Mier. Game over, season over, controversy just beginning.

“That’s a tough call in that situation,” Knott told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune’s Fred J. Robledo. “I thought we got the out.”

There were many heroes for Bonita, starting with Calderaro, who gave Bonita a chance to win and drove in Bonita’s first run with a one-out double. Evan Highley, Corey Hare and Terry Paredez each collected a pair of hits.

South Hills was paced by freshman, Ty France, who up until the fateful eighth inning had driven in all three South Hills runs with a 2-run double in the third and a homer in the sixth. Then there was Klena effectively mixing his fastball and off-speed pitches to limit Bonita to three runs.

And finally there was CJ Taylor coming off the bench and pulling down a pitch from the sky to get enough of his bat on it for a perfect suicide squeeze – a freshman understudy thrown on a stage some will argue for seasons to come he should never have been on in the first place.

South Hills pitched around Jio Mier all afternoon, a strategy that was successful until the top of the seventh when Mier cracked a lead-off home run to tie the game, 3-3.

Second baseman Ryan Henley helped secure a solid defensive effort by Bonita.