Around the horn in county baseball:
• JSerra plays St. Francis of Mountain View in the Boras Classic championship game Saturday at noon at Cal State Fullerton. JSerra, No. 1 in calhisports.com’s California top 20, won the South bracket and No. 12 St. Francis was North bracket winner of the statewide tournament. ESPN3 will televise the game.
• Tickets for the Boras final are $7 for adults and $5 for all others. Be prepared to pay $8 for parking at a kiosk in the lot.
• There is not a CIF State baseball championship. The Boras Classic was created three years ago to provide the closest thing that California baseball has to a state tournament.
• Huntington Beach returned to the CIF-Southern Section baseball rankings this week. The Oilers are No. 4 in Division 1. Maybe that return should have been at a higher berth; the No. 3 team is Alemany of Mission Hills which Huntington Beach defeated, 7-0, in the third-place game of the Boras Classic South bracket on April 10.
• Three teams are No. 1 in their CIF-SS divisions: JSerra, in Division 1; San Clemente, Division 2; and Crean Lutheran, Division 6.
• Other high-ranked teams in the CIF-SS polls are Dana Hills, No. 2 in Division 1; Mission Viejo, No. 2 in Division 2; and Sage Hill, No. 4 in Division 6.
• The Orange County Baseball All-Star Game, organized and managed again by the Kiwanis Club of Greater Anaheim, is June 8 at Dee Fee Field, the baseball part of the Glover Stadium complex at La Palma Park. Head coaches are John Weber of Cypress for the North and JSerra’s Brett Kay for the South. Rosters are being compiled now.
• Ocean View junior Braydon Salzman pitched a no-hitter Friday in the Seahawks’ 4-0 win over Loara. He struck out 15. Salzman is 5-2 with a 2.06 ERA and 49 strikeouts in 34 innings for the Golden West League leaders.
• St. Michael’s Prep pitcher Michael Gates is tough on Express League rival Tarbut V’Torah. He has thrown two two-hit shutouts against Tarbut, with 19 strikeouts in one of the wins and 18 strikeouts in the other.
• Besides the Boras Classic final, other top games the first couple of days this week include Sage Hill at Crean Lutheran, Academy League, today; Aliso Niguel at Dana Hills, South Coast League, today; Mission Viejo at Trabuco Hills, Sea View League, today; and Capistrano Valley at Tesoro, South Coast League, today.
• CASportsZone.com’s online audio coverage of county baseball this week includes all three Mater Dei-Orange Lutheran games (Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday) and both Aliso Niguel-Dana Hills and Huntington Beach-Newport Harbor games (both are Wednesday-Friday series).
• Todd Fahey, a 6-foot-4 junior left-handed pitcher, transferred last week from Fairmont Prep to Artesia of Lakewood, his father reported via email. Fahey had 42 strikeouts in 22 innings at Fairmont.
• Tesoro beat Edison in an Edison Tournament game Saturday, but that was not the tournament championship game although both were 4-0 in the tournament going into that game. Dana Hills won the tournament, going 5-0 including a 7-2 win over California of Whittier in the tournament championship game April 18.
• CIF-Southern Section playoffs begin with wild-card round games, if necessary, May 19 and 20. Wild-card round games will be required only if the number of automatic qualifiers is more than would fit in a division’s 32-team bracket. Wild-card games would reduce the field to 32 teams in each of the section’s seven playoff divisions.
• CIF-SS playoff brackets will be released May 18 and will be available at ocvarsity.com upon release.
• CIF-SS championship games are June 6. Finals in Divisions 1-4 will be at 5,000-seat San Manuel Stadium in San Bernardino. Finals in Divisions 5-7 are at UC Riverside.
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
