Summit Shasta baseball swings to program record 13th overall win

But as the leading hitter in a potent Summit Shasta lineup — as a team, the Black Bears are batting .360 with Kuang a team-best .514 — he couldn’t help but ham it up with style points going headlong into home.

“It was kind of adrenaline,” Kuang said. “All I heard was silence in my head. I didn’t hear anything. [My teammates] were telling me ‘Up!’ but I didn’t hear them. So, I slid. Better to be safe than sorry.”

It was a fun finish to one of the most exciting plays in baseball. And the Black Bears (6-1 PSAL, 13-1 overall) are certainly having a lot of fun this season. They suffered one hiccup March 30 with a 6-5 extra-inning loss to More-San Jose but have otherwise run the table thus far in 2022. With Tuesday’s win, Summit Shasta set the all-time program record for overall wins with 13, besting the 2018 team that posted a 12-3 record.

“It’s the best record we’ve ever had, so we’re off to a good start,” Black Bears manager Victor Gallant said.

Kuang was a force both sides of the ball in the historic victory. In addition to his three-run home run in the second inning, the senior was dazzling in four innings of work as Summit Shasta’s starting pitcher. The right-hander allowed just three hits and two walks while striking out eight.

Despite his dominant stuff, Kuang has pitched sparingly this season. Tuesday was just his third appearance and his first starting pitching assignment of the season.

“Most of the time he catches,” Gallant said. “He really wanted this game and I said: ‘Sure.’ I’ve only thrown him a couple times. He can deal though. But I like him behind the plate because he just guns people down all the time.”

Senior right-hander David Velis and junior right-hander Jacob Devis have been the backbone of the rotation, eating up 39 1/3 innings this season. As a staff, the Black Bears have posted a 2.43 ERA.

“Both of them have dealing a lot for us this year,” Kuang said. “They’ve done a lot of work. Without them, we wouldn’t be where we are.”

But the bread-and-butter for the small, Division V-level program has been the bats. And while the Black Bears didn’t make any hard contact the first time through the batting order against Pinewood starting pitcher Jamie Burton, they still managed to scratch out four runs in the first inning.

Then, the second time through the order, the hits got louder, and the volume quickly proved contagious.

“Hitting is definitely contagious with this team,” Gallant said. “When somebody gets going, it fires everybody else up. Seeing the pitcher a second time around helps a little bit.”

Kuang escaped a jam in the top of the first inning, navigating infield hits by Devan Reynard and Owen Terry by striking out the side.

Then in the bottom of the frame, Velis walked, Benedict Del Rosario got hit by a pitch and Pierre Gaudario reached on an error to load the bases. Milo Jung followed with a bloop double down the right-field line to score two runs. Parker Mendoza followed with a two-run double on a seemingly routine fly ball that the Pinewood outfielder lost in the sun.

In the second, the top of the order set the table. Velis got hit by a pitch and Del Rosario lined a single back through the middle. Kuang stepped up looking for the same changeup he’d gotten jammed with in his first at-bat, when he popped out harmlessly to third, and this this time didn’t miss it, drilling one into the left-center field gap and flying around the bases for his first home run of the season.

“I didn’t think it was going to be a home run,” Kuang said. “I thought it was going to be a double or a triple. But they just kept running me, so I just kept running.”

Pinewood (3-2, 4-4) scratched out a run in the top of the fifth against the Summit Shasta reliever Velis. But in the bottom of the fifth, the Black Bears walked it off with a mercy-rule 10-run differential.

Velis essentially stole the win after singling with the bases loaded to drive home two runs, upping the lead to 10-1. With the ball still live, and Velis standing on first, he noticed second base was undefended and took off running, drawing a throw in the process. The throw was offline and ended up in center field, allowing the baserunner on third base, Marquez Thompson, to jog home with the winning run.

Despite the program-record wins total, Summit Shasta still has work to do in order to punch its ticket to the postseason. The Black Bears are currently in second place in the PSAL standings, with first-place More (7-0, 13-4) one game ahead in the standings. With only one guaranteed Central Coast Section playoff berth being allotted to the PSAL, the two teams square off once more this year, May 6, on the final day of the regular season.

In the event of a first-place tie in the PSAL standings, the winner of the automatic CCS bid will be determined by cumulative head-to-head score, Gallant said.

“We’re going to have to beat these guys (third-place Pinewood), and we’re going to have to beat More,” Gallant said. “So, it’s kind of in our hands. We have a chance. It’s going to be tough, but we have a chance.”

Umpire’s rookie blues

There was a scary moment in the third inning Tuesday, when home plate umpire Earl Grogan took a sharp foul tip off the left collarbone. Grogan fell to the ground immediately writhing in pain. Play was halted for several minutes until Grogan got back on his feet. He was able to continue and said after the game he was feeling no ill effects of the foul ball.

Grogan is a longtime softball umpire but has only recently started working baseball games. Tuesday’s Pinewood-Summit Shasta was just the third baseball game of his officiating career, he said.

“In the last game … I took it in the right shoulder, so all this does is balances me out,” Grogan said.