ANAHEIM For 4½ innings, Los Alamitos and El Dorado played beautiful baseball — a 0-0 tie that featured four perfect innings by Griffins right-hander Michael Townsend.
And then, a smiling Los Al coach Matt Nuez joked, “a high school baseball game broke out.”
Thirteen runs, five errors and four hit batters later, Los Alamitos left Boysen Park with a come-from-behind 8-5 victory that was, in its own way, as satisfying as perfection. At least for Los Alamitos.
Thursday’s victory, which followed three consecutive character-building one-run wins, put the Griffins (5-1) into the title game of the prestigious Loara Tournament. They will play Edison on Saturday at 7 p.m. at La Palma Park for the championship.
“We’re coming off a two-year period where we lost (a lot of) one-run games,” Nuez said. “To win three one-run games and then come back today means something.
“The resilience they showed today is huge for us. It’s not so much the end result, but the process that is so important. We’re learning how to scrap. That means something.”
El Dorado (3-2), which got a combined five innings of shutout pitching from starter Marcus Reed (3 innings, 2 hits) and Ethan Hunt (2 innings, 2 hits), looked like it was heading to the title game after it scrapped its way to four runs off Townsend in the fifth.
A single by first baseman Kyle Luckham opened the fifth and ended Townsend’s flirtation with a perfect game and then things got sloppy. An infield single by Augie Mattei that Townsend almost had left runners at first and second, then third baseman Garrett Stark smacked a run-scoring single through a hole left by the shortstop who was faking a pickoff play at second.
After a sacrifice put runners at second and third, Townsend recorded a strikeout, and Adrian Romo hit a flyball double that almost was caught but scored both runners. Romo later scored on a single by Jesse Lopez and an infield error.
“I felt really good for four innings,” said Townsend, a UCLA commit. “I could have made a play in there in the fifth, but it turned out to be a lot of fun to win the way we did.
“We’re the comeback kids. I believe in this team.”
Down 4-0 going into the top of the sixth, the Griffins got some help in mounting their comeback. Three hit batters and two errors opened the gates for four runs, with a single by first baseman Mark Sanford the key hit in the inning.
El Dorado came back to take a 5-4 lead in the bottom of the sixth on a hit batter, a single by Luckham and an infield error, but the Griffins again battled back in the seventh. Singles by center fielder Michael Magana, Sanford, Will Laws and Casey Buckley, combined with another infield error and a wild pitch, led to four runs.
Senior right-hander Garrett Rennie, who got the last four outs, ended up getting the win after he got through the seventh with just a single by Romo, who was 2 for 3 with two RBI. Luckham was also 2 for 3, while the Griffins’ Sanford and Laws had two hits.
In the other semifinal:
Edison 9, Bishop Amat 1: The Chargers (6-2) scored five runs in the sixth inning to secure their spot in the tournament championship game.
Riley Haddon earned the victory, while Connor Aoki and (three RBI) and Nolan Funke (two RBI) provided key hits.
