A look back at winter’s best

While not everyone agrees with our selections, they are not made haphazardly or without thought. Some recipients are easy, slam dunks. Others choices, however, are agonized over. Both basketball honorees were pretty easy to nail down. Same goes for boys’ soccer.

But girls’ soccer and the wrestling awards, one each for best female and male grappler, were more difficult. In the end, we believe we made the right decisions.

But what I have found over the years, regardless if readers agree or not on the selection, there is no denying that each player has an interesting story to tell. If you look at these stories through that prism, there really are no bad choices.

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Every time I think I’ve seen it all in baseball, something happens to make me realize I haven’t — and I’m probably not even close to seeing it all.

During Sacred Heart Prep’s 5-2 win over Burlingame last week, Burlingame’s Jake Richardson hit a slow grounder to the left side of the infield. Brendan Magalong, who had reached first on an error and moved to second on a wild pitch, broke for third base as SHP third baseman Yianni Gardner went to field the ball.

Gardner, Magalong and the ball all arrived at the same time, resulting in a collision between second and third. SHP shortstop Jack Donnelly picked the ball up and threw late to first, with Richardson reaching on what I suppose was an infield hit.

The two umpires huddled together for a conference at the end of which everything stayed the way it went: Magalong was awarded third and Richardson was safe at first. Magalong would go on to score Burlingame’s second run of the game in a 5-2 SHP victory.

I’m not exactly how to score that play. Ultimately, it did not have a bearing on the final outcome, but I was still curious. A quick Google search pulled up umpirebible.com and I found the section regarding interference. You’ve probably heard that if the fielder is in the base path, the base runner can run them over, or at least run into them in the hopes of being awarded a base on defensive interference.

But that isn’t the case. There is a possible offensive interference call and it’s at the umpires’ discretion to determine if the offensive player, in this case Magalong, purposely went out of his way to prevent Gardner from cleanly fielding the ball. If Gardner was just standing there, impeding the runner, that would be one thing. But the fact he was trying to make a play on the ball meant almost any contact would have to be made by the runner, thus opening up the possibility of offensive interference.

I think it was pretty obvious that there was no ill intent. It was just a confluence of factors that brought two players and the ball to the same spot at the same time.

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Greg Gonzalez, a 2006 graduate of Capuchino, is moving up the baseball coaching ladder. Gonzalez, who had spent the last four years as an assistant at Skyline, is now a volunteer assistant at Santa Clara University.

After a standout career at Capuchino, Gonzalez spent two years at Skyline, amassing 22 wins and earning All-American honors in his two seasons. He then transferred to Fresno State where he continued to excel. He posted a 19-3 record over two seasons, throwing a no-hitter against University of Hawaii in 2010. He was drafted in the 15th round of the MLB Draft and spent three years in the San Diego Padres system.

In addition to coaching the Broncos, Gonzalez is working toward his Masters Degree in kinesiology from St. Mary’s College.

Nathan Mollat can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: 344-5200 ext. 117.