Stars sweep Baker’s ATH Tigers
- Updated: June 6, 2017
2017 STARS BASEBALL
=============================
Stars sweep after friendship placed on hold
By Nick Pellegrino
Special to East County Sports.com
SANTEE (6-5-2017) —- San Diego Stars owner/field manager Mickey Deutschman is very good friends with former Major League Baseball infielder Doug Baker, who reached the big leagues with the Detroit Tigers as a middle infielder.
How good of friends? Between games of Sunday’s (June 4) non-league double-header, Baker actually joined Mickey D. with field maintenance of the pitching mound… while talking about the game they both love.
As for the game action, Baker’s summer collegiate ballclub, appropriately tabbed the Tigers, displayed great improvement over previous teams, but the Stars still registered another sweep of the North County based program, 6-3 and 8-7, in action at West Hills High.
The victories came in opposite fashions.
In the opener, former Wolf Pack standout Jeremiah Barr, who never batted all season for the state championship team at Grossmont College, saw his second at-bat result in a 2-run homer in the 3rd inning. The blast to right-center field came right after former West Hills teammate Aaron Barkley doubled.
The pair will reunite next season at Division I Mississippi Valley State after both receiving scholarship offers while both playing for West Hills in 2016.
An inning later, catcher Nick Mora drove in a run, with a second run scoring on an outfield error.
In the 6th, Clayton Lewis singled home a run, followed by a Mora sacrifice fly for this second RBI to make a winner of Hawks pitcher Michael Horton, who tossed a 7-inning complete game.
Pitching for San Diego Christian College (18-23) this past spring, Horton only appeared for 6 2/3 innings, beating that total in just his first Stars appearance after getting “fixed” by Mickey D. He struck out four and allowed just two earned runs.
Following the wire-to-wire triumph, the Stars needed to rally from a 6-1 deficit, finally taking the lead after scoring three times in the 5th.
In the decisive trip to the plate, with Barr and Barkley transposed in the batting order, J-Barr first walked, then scored on a Barkley triple.. Barkley then tied the game on a basehit by new-look first baseman Shane Coleman.
Coleman, who lost about 20 pounds since last summer, is now batting exactly .400 through the first week of the current summer season. He eventually reached third base, then posted the go-ahead run on a Tigers wild pitch.
The Stars return to WBA action on Tuesday, hosting the San Diego Mavericks at 5 p.m.
Stars Open Season, drop DH to Dove Tail
==============================
Stars’ return to Santee ends in disappointment
By Nick Pellegrino
Special to ECS.com
SANTEE (6-4-2017) —- The San Diego Stars made their triumphant return to the City of Santee on Saturday (June 3) — be it on just a part-time basis– but things couldn’t go more wrong.
Special to ECS.com
SANTEE (6-4-2017) —- The San Diego Stars made their triumphant return to the City of Santee on Saturday (June 3) — be it on just a part-time basis– but things couldn’t go more wrong.
Following the cancellation of the ballclub’s annual Memorial Day Weekend Tournament — none of the usual participants were prepared to play –the Stars, in turn, were not fully aligned for their Western Baseball Association summer opener, dropping a doubleheader to Dove Tail Baseball Academy, 13-6 and 10-7, at West Hills High.
The original Stars of the late 1970s originally utilized the diamond at Santana High as their home base until owner/field manager Mickey Deutschman forged the creation of a private ballpark on the Barona Indian Reservation in 1995.
Twenty-two years later, operational logistics required to move nearly half of the home contests back to the “greater community” — a modern American Indian term for off-the-reservation — starting this season.
The relocation of games, even part-time, was given a thumps-up by the players since it required less travel time and distance, plus. Wolf Pack Park played like a college field since it’s bigger than most high schools fields.
Such advantages failed to come into play, however, as Dove Tail dashed to early leads in both sides of the twinbill.
In Game 1, Dove Tail scored in each of the first seven innings to mount a 13-3 cushion, In Game 2, it was 8-0 in the 4th due to poor starting pitching and the absence of timely hitting; the Stars stranded 24 base-runners on the afternoon.
