The Turlock Christian varsity baseball team lost for the first time this season after meeting Millennium High for the second time in a Central California Athletic Alliance matchup on Wednesday afternoon.
The first meeting on Monday resulted in a dramatic comeback by the TC Eagles, who ended up topping Millennium in the ninth inning with an 11-10 victory.
It was the first league loss of the year for Millennium and they came out with a fury in their second contest on Wednesday from Pedretti Park.
TC took a quick 2-1 lead after the first inning but were outscored 6-1 for the next five innings and eventually the Eagles fell for the first time since last year after a 7-3 final.
“We played the same team two days ago, and they came back and were ready to play ball,” said TC head coach James Burbank. “We made little mistakes that cost us some runs and we lost the game by four runs, maybe all four were on little mistakes, whether it be walks or something along those lines.”
TC surrendered a total of five walks and 10 hits for the game. Of the seven runs, only five were earned.
Liam Jones started the game for TC and went 4 1/3 innings, allowing six hits, three earned runs, five walks and struck out four.
Markie Delgadillo came in to relieve Jones and went 2 and 2/3 innings while allowing two earned runs on four hits.
“Little things hurt us today. It all starts with the fundamentals of throwing strikes and when you give them bases and give them outs, little errors here and there, good teams will capitalize on it,” said Burbank.
Millennium took advantage of their opportunities beginning with the top of the third when they added a pair of runs. Millennium managed to get a rally going after adding two-runs in the fifth and sixth inning to take a controlling 7-2 lead heading into the bottom half of the sixth.
Micah Blomenkamp of TC scored the Eagles third and final run in the sixth after a wild pitch allowed him to cross home plate to make it 7-3.
TC nearly strung a comeback in the bottom of the seventh with two outs after getting back-to-back hits from Liam Jones followed by Jakob Skinner. Unfortunately, both runners were left in scoring position. TC left a total of six runners on base for the game.
“I knew as soon as we got two on, they thought maybe here we go again like the last game. But it’s like I tell our kids it's not how you start the game it’s how you finish it,” said Burbank. “Today we played a little short, but we never gave up and kept playing baseball.”
The TC Eagles will host Denair in a non-league game at 4 p.m. Monday.
