Pony baseball: Seismic seventh

Barry Faulkner

CORONA DEL MAR - This was a rally for the Richter scale: a big

jolt, followed by a game-winning aftershock that capped aseismic seventh

inning Sunday for the Quakes Baseball Academy.

The Quakes used home runs by Hank Conger (a two-run bomb) and David

Csik, both to straightaway center field, to erase a 3-1 deficit and claim

a 4-3 conquest in the final of the Newport-Mesa Pony Conference Father’s

Day Tournament at Eastbluff Park.

The Quakes’ walk-off heroics hampered what may have been a victory

celebration for the Newport Harbor All-Stars, who rode two homers of

their own to a two-run lead heading into the seventh.

Conger, a former Little League legend from Huntington Beach, who hit

more than 30 home runs to nearly lead Ocean View to the Little League

World Series last sbpring, started the winning rally. Conger’s blast,

which came with a grunt, knotted things at 3-3 with no outs in the

seventh.

The blow, which followed an error, negated a strong pitching

performance by Newport Harbor starter Kevin Courvoisier, who gave way to

relief after getting the first out of the seventh on a sharp groundout.

After a strikeout, Csik (pronounced cheek) kissed one over the fence

to allow the Quakes to collect first-place trophies.

“Conger had been playing with our Mickey Mantle team (16-and-under),”

Elliott, the Corona del Mar High freshman coach, said of the stocky

13-year old slugger. “But we asked him to play with us today.”

Csik’s blast was also a pleasant surprise, according to his coach. “He

hadn’t been playing the last two weeks, so we were trying to get his

swing right.”

Mark Doble, Dennis Heenan and Steven Wirsch had singles to account for

the rest of the Quakes’ five hits and Al Meschi pitched three relief

innings to get the win.

Courvoisier, who struck out five and allowed only one earned run,

launched a two-run homer to center to break a 1-1 tie in the sixth.

Patrick Keehan drove an opposite-field homer to right to open the

fifth to answer an unearned Quakes run in the second.

Matt Erickson, Courvoisier, Kurt Yacko and Aaron Fitzhugh each had two

hits for Newport, which left nine runners on base and committed the

game’s only three errors.

Newport Harbor continues in a tournament in Los Alamitos tonight,

before opening district tournament play in mid-July.

The Quakes, whose 10-player lineup included seven 13-year-olds Sunday,

continues to prepare for its state tournament later this month.