Baseball: City Section's race to Dodger Stadium is wide open

With Taft defeating Cleveland Friday in a West Valley League game and beating Chatsworth last week, the surprising Toreadors now own victories over supposedly the two favorites to win the City Championship.

It means Taft is playing well, but it also means that the race to Dodger Stadium is wide open. There is no dominant team. Kennedy in the Valley Mission League, Narbonne in the Marine League and Roosevelt in the Eastern League all have to be considered legitimate title contenders.

What Taft has shown with left-handed pitcher Ryan Santhon is that strong pitching and good defense can topple Chatsworth and Cleveland.

And Chatsworth is fortunate it was able to pull out a 1-0 victory over El Camino Real on Friday. Michael Booth had a terrific pitching performance for El Camino Real, which committed three errors in the seventh to allow the only run to score.

-- Eric Sondheimer

-- Image from toonrefugee.com

Comments

[Mr Basenball]

Good observation Eric. The West Valley is going to be REAL interesting next couple weeks. Anyone notice the 3 lefthanders everyone is talking about came out of Mid Valley Pony? Chris Reed, Edgar Almos, and Ryan Santhon all played thier 14 year old season there, and all were transplanted there from other leagues. (some played Mid Valley several seasons) Nopt to mention the Great right handed pitchers you will be hearinbg about also.... Stay tuned!

[A. C. Stickley]

MID VALLEY? Ryan Santhon played for West Valley National Little League for most of his youth and Edgar Olmos played there as well they were at Mid Valley for only a few seasons just before highschool as a transistion from 60- 70 feet instead of the 90 foot bases which west valley provided. Santhon and Olmos had their fun playing baseball for West Valley, end of story.