Coming off a sweep last week against Leigh, Willow Glen baseball turned things around with two big wins over Branham in Blossom Valley Athletic League play. The Rams are now back in contention in the Mt. Hamilton Division.
Coming off a sweep last week against Leigh, Willow Glen baseball turned things around with two big wins over Branham in Blossom Valley Athletic League play. The Rams are now back in contention in the Mt. Hamilton Division.
Subscribe to continue reading this article.
Already subscribed? To log in, click here.
SAN JOSE — As omens go, this wasn’t one you’d anticipate.
When Chris Von Barloewen stepped up to the plate with two on and two out in the fourth inning of Branham and Willow Glen’s baseball game on Friday afternoon in San Jose, he had no way of knowing what would happen next.
Working the count against Rams pitcher Spencer Bartlinski, the Bruins’ center fielder fouled off an 0-2 pitch to stay alive in the at-bat. The errant baseball crossed the street and struck the windshield of an unsuspecting SUV parked on the other side of Dent Avenue.
The car was fine, but its alarm began to blare loudly. Meanwhile, on the very next pitch, Bartlinski struck out Von Barloewen looking.
The alarm, which continued to sound for minutes afterward, signified a shift in the game’s momentum. Willow Glen added two runs in the next half-inning and never looked back, winning 3-1 and spoiling Branham’s chance to split the two teams’ home-and-home series with a home victory.
On a chilly, windy and rainy day where it wasn’t even a certainty the game would be played, it was a fitting way to usher in the pivot point of a tight contest in the Blossom Valley Athletic League’s Mt. Hamilton Division.
“We did a great job keeping our focus,” Willow Glen coach Brian Vieira said after sweeping the weekly two-game league set. “It was a little misty, little rainy when they got here, kind of like that for the whole time we warmed up until game time. So you never know how guys are going to come out.
“But we had a rough week last week, and our guys came out this week very focused for these games to get us back on track. I was really proud of their focus and just kind of their grit in a really close game.”
Bartlinski started the game for Willow Glen (12-6, 4-4 BVAL) and was on the verge of being pulled when Von Barloewen stepped up to the plate. Vieira walked out to the mound and took his temperature.
“He said, ‘Coach, I want this last guy,’” Vieira said. “So I said, ‘Let’s do it. We’ll go win the game for you.’”
By finishing the fourth inning, Bartlinski put himself in line to earn the victory on the mound in what was then a 1-1 game. He made sure he’d get it by hitting the game-winning RBI single in the top of the fifth.
“Coach comes up to me, like, ‘I have my next guy ready. Do you want it?’” Bartlinski recounted. “I’m like, ‘I want it.’ I knew I had that guy. I knew I was gonna be better than him, so I wanted it.”
After Bartlinski left the game, Willow Glen relievers Tyson Paganini and Nolan Wirtz combined for three innings of scoreless mound work.
“An amazing pitching performance from all three guys,” Vieira said. “Spencer started for us, got out of the fourth inning with some big pitches. Tyson’s been doing great for us all year and came in and did his job for two. And then Nolan in the last inning, four pitches, got three outs. He gave us an inning on Wednesday where he got three outs on five pitches. I’ve never seen a guy get six outs on nine pitches.”
Branham (10-6, 5-3) was left to rue a number of missed opportunities. The Bruins put at least two runners on base in five of seven innings, stranding 13 baserunners overall.
“My boys did enough to keep the game close,” Branham coach Gregory Olimpia said. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the win. When there’s runners on, I mentioned that we got to keep the ball out of the air. We had three or four guys reach base from ground balls that were scuffed. You’ve got to put the ball on the ground.”
Branham now finds itself in much the same situation that Willow Glen was in last Friday. A week ago, the Rams had just lost 7-3 at Leigh, clinching a sweep for the Longhorns that kept them undefeated in league play and alone atop the Mt. Hamilton.
Now, Willow Glen has a sweep of its own to celebrate after also beating Branham 7-0 on Wednesday, and the Rams are right back in the thick of things. Leigh (7-1), which lost its first league game to Pioneer on Friday, holds a two-game lead over Branham, Christopher (5-3) and the Mustangs (5-3), and the Rams are right behind them in fifth.
“We knew we needed to sweep to stay in league contention this week,” Bartlinski said.
Mission accomplished.
“We know we’re a better team than we showed,” Vieira said of the series with Leigh. “We respect everybody, but we want to win. We thought we had a good team too. It just wasn’t our week.”
If Willow Glen can stack a few more weeks like this one, it’ll have an excellent chance to make some noise in the league title race and the postseason.
