By ANDREW CRUM, Staff Writer
ROMA — It wasn’t supposed to end like this for Brownsville Veterans Memorial.
The Chargers were in control early, but squandered a late-inning lead in Game 2 and lost to Laredo United 7-6 in eight innings to end a best-of-three 6A baseball area round playoff series Saturday.
It looked like Brownsville Veterans was ready to force a deciding Game 3, but unfortunately, Laredo United had other ideas. The Longhorns scored six runs over the final three innings, including the go-ahead run in the extra frame on an RBI single by Adrian Castillo to stun the Chargers and win the series with a sweep.
“They got some momentum and bad things happened for us,” Brownsville Veterans coach Eric Gonzalez said. “I didn’t pull Noe (Solis) because he was throwing well, he was getting the ground balls that we needed. We made some non-plays, what I mean is we didn’t catch the ball when we needed to and we kept them alive.”
The day started out much better for the Chargers, who turned it around after a 4-0 loss Friday night. The bats got going from the start and Solis was solid on the mound.
After Laredo United opened the game with a run off an infield error, Brownsville Veterans found an offensive groove early. The Chargers scored four runs in the bottom half of the first inning after sending 10 batters to the plate. Solis had an RBI double and Sam Chapa added an RBI single. Brownsville Veterans scored the two others on a walk and a hits batsman to take a 4-1 advantage.
The Chargers added two more runs in the second after RBI singles by Solis and Chapa for a five-run cushion.
After that, the Brownsville Veterans’ offense had a few hits, but didn’t manufacture any more runs. It didn’t seem to matter as Solis was taking care of the Longhorns batting order, allowing just two hits and a walk through five.
Laredo United finally got a run back in the sixth inning on an RBI single by Fernando Benavides to cut into the deficit.
“I told these guys we were never out of this fight,” Laredo United coach J.J. Gomez said. “We went up to the plate with a little bit better approach and starting going the other way a little bit.”
In the seventh inning, the Longhorns rallied. After a leadoff double by Eddie Garcia and a single by Eduardo Mata, Jorge Ramos hit a run-scoring single to right field. Later in the inning, Jonathan Rodriguez hit a two-run single and Beto Cervantes got another run home on a fielders choice to tie the game at 6 and force extra innings.
Ricky Villareal pitched the final two innings in relief for the Longhorns to earn the win and allowed just two hits. Solis went the distance and pitched all eight innings in his final outing on the mound for the Chargers.
Brownsville Veterans got the offense it needed early, but Gonzalez said he had hoped for a few more runs.
“At some point I realized we needed to get one or two more runs,” he said. “That’s why I was bunting and moving guys over. When our offense stalled, I knew we needed to do something to score a little bit more. (Laredo United) was going to compete and it happened, they came back and got us after we let them hang around.”
For the Longhorns, they were able to find their offense at the right moment.
“I told them just make contact and pass it on to the next guy,” Gomez said. “It wasn’t anything special, we just fought through it. Someone had to step up and that’s what they did, you can’t measure the heart they had.”
After back-to-back district titles during the last two years, the Chargers will lose eight seniors to graduation, so the work begins now for next season.
“I lose a lot of experience, a lot of strength,” Gonzalez said. “We’re going to have to get in the weight room. We’re going to have to fill in with some spots with little experience at this level, so it’s going to be a lot of hard work.”
Andrew Crum covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him at (956) 982-6629 or via email at [email protected]. On Twitter he’s @andrewmcrum.