DENNIS SILVA II | STAFF WRITER
McALLEN — The birthday boy delivered, and so did McAllen High’s baseball team.
In a tango with La Joya High for the fourth and final playoff spot in District 30-6A with three games remaining, the Bulldogs struck early and often Thursday against McAllen Rowe at McHi, earning a demonstrative 14-4 win in five innings.
The win pushed McAllen High (13-5 overall) to 5-4 in district, tied with La Joya High, while Rowe fell to 6-3. Though their goal is simply to make the playoffs, the Bulldogs are now a game back of Rowe for second place and tied the season series with Thursday’s win.
“We have to be ready to play,” McHi coach Eliseo Pompa said. “We’re trying to get to the playoffs, and every game’s important.”
Celebrating his 18th birthday, senior Fred Hover got things started with a two-run homer to left center with no outs in the first inning.
Hover took a high 2-0 pitch from Ethan Ramirez and “was sitting dead red.”
“I was like, ‘Birthday!’” Hover said, laughing. “I took a cut and was able to get on top of it.”
It was an onslaught from there. The Bulldogs sliced Warriors pitching for four runs on five hits in the first inning, six runs on five hits in the fourth, and three runs on three hits in the fifth.
Hover went 2-for-3 with three RBIs. Kike Rodriguez went 2-for-3 with three RBIs. Victor Valdez outdid them all by going 4-for-4 with three RBIs.
“The best present ever,” Hover said. “This was a big win for us, a much-needed win. We’re in a playoff battle and we want it real bad. We’ve been hitting well late in games, and today we made it a point to come out like that from the start.
“We didn’t come out and test the water. We jumped right into it.”
Defensively, McHi junior Eli Rodriguez was stellar on the mound. The 6-foot-4 lefty pitched a complete game, struck out three and surrendered six hits.
Content to pitch to his defense, the only blemish on Rodriguez’s outing was a pesky rally by Rowe late in the fifth, when the Warriors scored three runs with two outs to extend the game a bit longer.
Otherwise, Rodriguez kept his pitches outside and low and didn’t look for strikeouts as much as routine plays.
“I was just throwing the ball down the middle and my defense made the plays,” Rodriguez said. “We had a good game. We didn’t want to lose again and we pretty much have to win out to make it. Tonight, our minds were in this game.”
The Bulldogs were coming off a 10-9 loss the night before to La Joya High. That game, the Bulldogs’ offense was sporadic. A wart this season has been leaving too many runners on base in big situations.
Against Rowe, that wasn’t the case. The Bulldogs had 16 hits, seven for extra bases.
“We put the ball in play,” Pompa said. “We kept our strikeouts to a minimum. We were patient and we swung at strikes. The kids were a little more focused than yesterday.”
McAllen High finishes the district season at La Joya Juarez-Lincoln, versus McAllen Memorial, and at 30-6A leader La Joya Palmview. La Joya High finishes against Mission High, at McAllen Rowe, and versus Juarez-Lincoln.
“Tonight really showed what we can do when we put our pitching and hitting together,” Hover said. “Now we need to keep it going.”