With one mammoth inning, Saint Louis wiped away weeks of frustration.
Taylor Meilleur’s two-out, inside-the-park home run started a string of four extra base hits in a row as the Crusaders exploded for three runs in the third en route to a 5-3 edging of Kamehameha in a matchup of Interscholastic League of Honolulu baseball contenders.
“We needed this win,” said coach George Gusman of No. 4 Saint Louis (8-4), which came into the game Saturday at Ala Wai Community Park having scored a mere six runs in its last five games while going 2-3 in that span. “They’ve (the Warriors) been struggling a bit and we know how they feel. We’ve been there. We stayed within ourselves today, stayed with our plan and got some timely hits. I’m happy for our guys. They’ve been working their butts off.”
With two losses in a row in the topsy-turvy ILH, No. 3 Kamehameha (8-5) quickly dropped from first place to third. Both the Crusaders and Warriors are looking up at Mid-Pacific (10-3).
In the bottom of the third, Meilleur hit a screaming line drive to center field that the Warriors’ Nick Penzetta came in for and misjudged. The ball went over his head and kept on rolling as Meilleur touched all the bases for a 2-1 Saint Louis lead. Brendan Uchima, Kai Alquiza and DJ Stephens followed with triples that found the power alleys off of Warriors starter Blaze Pontes, elevating the lead to 4-1.
“There were a couple of catchable balls that we should have had,” Kamehameha head coach Tom Perkins said. “They hit some gappers, too.”
The Warriors came out on the wrong end of four of five razor-close calls at first base. Two Saint Louis infield hits and two Kamehameha groundouts could easily have gone the other way. Also, the Warriors turned a double play in the sixth on a call in which the Crusaders runner appeared to reach safely.
Perkins did not complain about any of the judgment calls that went against his team, but at one point he spoke to the home-plate umpire about his pitchers not getting called strikes.
“I thought the ball was right there, so I asked him what we had to do,” Perkins said. “He said something about the catcher moving his glove to the strike zone, but I asked him, ‘Where was the pitch? Was it in the strike zone?”
Meilleur’s home run was a big boost to younger brother and winning pitcher Chase Meilleur, who celebrated his 17th birthday Saturday.
“He looked really good,” Taylor said about Chase. “We’ve had some talks over the dinner table, and I was proud to see him come through today and pitch the way I know he can pitch.”
Chase Meilleur went the distance for the victory, making one “mistake” pitch that Kamehameha clean-up hitter Mason Quinlan clobbered way over the left-field fence, estimated at 350 feet.
“I guess he made a mistake, so I just took a rip at it,” said Quinlan about his first varsity homer with Logan Salcedo aboard to cut the gap to 5-3 in the sixth. “It was right down the middle. We’ll be back Monday, working hard and trying to get some momentum going into the tournament and we’ll try to win that.”
Said Taylor Meilleur: “He left a changeup up and (Quinlan) crushed it. It was a ways, enough for us to go, ‘Holy cow, we need to not do that again.’ ”
Kamehameha’s Nick Penzetta reached on the game’s only error in the seventh, giving the Warriors hope. With one out, he took off for second, but was cut down on Taylor Meilleur’s throw to Alquiza, who tagged the leg of Penzetta during the latter’s head-first slide. Perkins thought he was safe, but it appeared that the tag came a split second before Penzetta’s hands touched the bag. Chase Meilleur got the next batter, Micah McNicoll, swinging to end the game.
Saint Louis’ Brendan Uchima finished 2-for-3 with a double, a triple, an RBI and a run scored.
“We’ve been struggling at the plate the past few games,” Uchima said. “Today, we were able to connect those hits and that’s why we won.”
