By MARK MOLINA
Staff Writer
HARLINGEN — District 32-6A baseball has three teams boasting winning records — Brownsville Veterans, Los Fresnos and Brownsville Hanna.
Then, you have the next four teams fighting it out for the fourth spot.
Among those four are cross-town rivals Harlingen and Harlingen South, who have a combined three district wins and are looking to close out the first half of district play in strong fashion tonight at Harlingen Field.
The Cards are 2-4, while the Hawks are 1-5, but both are within striking distance of fourth-place San Benito (3-3), making tonight’s game about more than a rivalry for Harlingen head coach Bryan Aughney and his squad.
“We try not to treat any game bigger than the next, but it’s always good to have a good showing in front of your cross-town rivals,” Aughney said. “However, we have bigger fish to fry trying to get into the playoffs. We are not talking about (Harlingen South), but about playoffs and playing our style of baseball so that we can continue our season.”
On Tuesday, the Cards defeated Brownsville Lopez to end a four-game skid and keep themselves a game back of San Benito.
But a loss tonight can make it an almost-meaningless win.
“We got back in the W column, but if we don’t show up mentally (tonight), then Tuesday is all for naught,” Aughney said. “We’re fighting for our playoff lives here, so we have to go out there and take care of business.”
Before Tuesday, two of the four Cardinal losses were by a run, losing to Brownsville Hanna 3-2 and then to San Benito 7-6 in a 12-inning slugfest.
However, they also had a couple of games to forget, losing to Los Fresnos 13-7 and Brownsville Vets 5-1.
Aughney thinks his team has the tools to pull out some of these close games, but only if his team can focus and be disciplined.
“We need to fix our mental game more than anything,” Aughney said. “We have the personnel and guys who can play, but it’s just putting ourselves into a mindset where we can have success.”
For the South Hawks, the mentality is different.
With a squad full of younger players, head coach Tony Leal and the Hawks are just looking to get better after falling 4-3 to San Benito Tuesday night.
While some may go game by game, the Hawks are taking it one inning at a time.
“We haven’t even spoken (about the playoffs) recently,” Leal said. “We’ve just been trying to win an inning because we’re inconsistent. We are focused on one inning and then the next because we have highs and lows, but our kids our working. We played decently against San Benito, but we still didn’t have enough to win.”
Leal went on to say that Harlingen is a good team and believes they are one of the four playoff-caliber teams.
Still, one thing his team has going for them tonight is lack of pressure.
“It’s hard to feel pressure when you’re on the bottom,” Leal said. “We have nothing to lose, just to play so we can get better.”