California Rays strike early with rallies in first and second to beat Napa Valley Baseball Club, go on to take tournament title after coming up short last year

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By Kyle Foster

Kfost91197@gmail.com

Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews

Yountville-While you’d like to win every tournament you enter, sometimes this goal isn’t always going to happen. 

On Sunday afternoon at Cleve Borman Field, this was the case as the California Rays beat the Napa Valley Baseball Club 19U, 12-6, in the second semifinal of the 48th annual Bill Buckner Memorial 4th of July tournament. 

The Rays began the game with three runs in the first. Tournament MVP Anthony Capra walked and stole second before getting to third on a groundout. That was followed by a walk to Cooper Wright to put runners on the corners. Elias Ferran reached on a fielder’s choice to bring in Capra. Royce Hall walked and then moved to second on a wild pitch, where Ferran also went to third. A single by Luke Dress brought in Ferran and Hall. 

In the second, the Rays scored twice more to extend the lead. They scored 4 times in the fourth to regain the lead, then put the game away with 3 in the sixth.  

Meanwhile, NVBC (11-8) tied things up in the fourth when they scored five times.  Parker Dahl walked and Abe Schweiky singled. A single by Peter Hurd brought in Dahl and got Schweiky to third, and Tysin Costella ran for Hurd. A fielder’s choice by Sam Mautner brought in Schweiky. Zee Rafael was hit by a pitch, and Grant Huss singled to load the bases for Josh McCall, who doubled to left-center to bring in Mautner and Rafael. Hunter Weis grounded, bringing in Huss. 

“That’s a very good team we just played,” Napa Valley Baseball Club 19U head coach John Hurd said. “They obviously had us on our backs from the first inning, but yeah, our bats got hot, and we got it back to an even ball game, and super proud of that. But just didn’t have enough in the tank to get it done today.” 

Napa Valley Baseball Club scored once more in the game and for the tournament when Huss doubled to left-center and scored on a Costella single and an errant throw.    

Leading the NVBC offense in the game were Huss (2-for-3, double, 2 runs scored), McCall (1-for-3, double, 2 RBIs), Mautner (1-for-3, run, RBI), Hurd (1-for-3, RBI), Dahl (1-for-3, walk, run), and Schweiky (1-for-4, run). 

Taking the loss on the mound for NVBC was Wyatt Rohrs. He worked the first 3 ⅓ innings of the game, during which he walked 6 and struck out 4. The right-hander allowed 7 hits and 9 earned runs in the game. However, he kept his team in it despite not having his best stuff. 

“It took him a little bit to settle in, but then he did eventually settle in, pitched some good innings for us,” Hurd added. “Unfortunately, the pitch count just ran up too high before we would like.” 

For the majority of this group, this is the second straight year they’ve lost in the semifinals. However, there was a huge jump from last year to this one as they were in this game the whole time. But for now, the third time may have to be the charm a year from now.   

“They’ve really leveled up in terms of the maturity,” Hurd said of his group that was still relatively young for this 19-and-under event. “They’re still a very young team. We’re still playing older teams. A lot of these teams in this tournament are two on average, maybe two years older than our boys are. So the fact that they can get in there and still compete, fight, get in the semis, play hard is really encouraging. Look forward to next year.”

In the other semifinal to begin the day, San Bruno VFW beat Headfirst-Bercovich 2-0 to advance to the title game and set up a rematch from Saturday pool play. No team from Pool 1 made the championship.  

To begin the championship game on Sunday, the Rays scored 6 runs right away to take control of the game. They went on to win the game 9-0 after finishing as runner-up last season. Jesus Olivas won Most Valuable Pitcher from San Bruno after a marvelous performance in the morning semifinal game. 

On a personal note, I want to thank Steve Meyer and his whole staff for putting on another successful event. You should thank Steve the next time you see him for taking care of us to make these articles free for everyone to read throughout the tournament.