Los Gatos Boys Baseball will host the Pony Baseball regional tournament at Fisher Middle School this week.
And Los Gatos came mighty close to having two entries in the prestigious tournament.
The Los Gatos Pony League all-star team gets an automatic berth in the tournament since the league is hosting the event. Gatos opens tourney play on Aug. 1, 5:30 p.m., at Fisher.
But Pony officials almost had to make room for another Los Gatos club. Because Ron Denevi's Los Gatos #2 all-star squad made it to the finals of the Pony sectional tournament before losing a tough decision to Washington Manor.
Los Gatos hosted that tourney, too, and the local Pony squad played the role of the ungracious host by opening the event with back-to-back wins over Blossom Valley and Campbell.
Gatos battled Washington Manor in the finals of the winner's bracket, but lost a 3-2 heartbreaker in eight innings. Joe McCarthy went seven strong innings on the hill for Los Gatos, but had to give way to relief in the eighth. An unearned run drop Los Gatos into the loser's bracket against San Jose Pacific.
Chris Denevi and Joe Sprutenburg slapped three hits apiece and were in the middle of all three scoring rallies to lead Los Gatos to an exciting 11-9 win over Pacific and into the tournament championship game.
But Gatos lost to Washington Manor in the finals to finish second overall.
The LG crew had clinched no worse than a second-place finish with the win over San Jose, but it was a win that didn't come easy.
Singles by Markus Willard, Rick Esparza, Denevi and Sprutenburg keyed a three-run rally in the second, and a Sprutenburg single and four errors helped Gatos pick up four more runs in the fourth.
Denevi and Sprutenburg each added their third hits of the day in a four-run fifth, and Gatos had a solid 11-4 lead.
But San Jose Pacific kept battling back. Kevin Sparrer doubled twice and singled to drive in four runs, Larry Cummins had three hits and Derek Baillif singled and tripled to help cut the Los Gatos lead to 11-9 after six innings.
Darkness stopped the Friday night game, and the clubs had to resume play Saturday morning. McCarthy returned to the hill for Los Gatos, and virtually struck out the side to nail down the win (one runner reached first on a missed third strike).
Sprutenburg tossed the first three innings for Los Gatos, giving up just one earned run and allowing only four hits.
Kevin Krug went the middle three innings before giving way to McCarthy in the seventh. Krug chipped in with a single and three stolen bases in the Gatos offensive attack.
Catcher Ben Frazier singled, was hit by a pitch and reached on an error his first three times for Los Gatos. Frazier stole a pair of bases in the win.
Simon Ormandy, Andrew Tumason, Ajay Athavale, Brent Thelen and Sean Sanford were other members of the second-place Los Gatos squad that was managed by Ron Denevi and coached by Mike Denevi and Derek Reichstein.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, July 31, 1996.
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