HUNTINGTON BEACH – The Huntington Beach baseball team was about ready to put away the uniforms and gear on May 19.
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That same team is going to put a championship plaque in the school’s trophy case.
Huntington Beach beat Cathedral Catholic, 5-3, on Saturday in the CIF Southern California Regional Division I championship game at Huntington Beach High.
It is Huntington Beach’s second CIF SoCal Regional baseball championship. The Oilers won their first regional title in 2022.
Huntington Beach senior Jared Grindlinger hit a two-run home run in the first inning.
The Oilers added three runs in the bottom of the sixth for a 5-0 lead.
San Diego’s Cathedral Catholic made a comeback effort in the seventh inning, scoring three unearned runs, and had runners on second and third base when Grindlinger, pitching in relief, got a strikeout for the third out to end the game.
Huntington Beach finished the season 25-8-1.
Saturday’s game was the Oilers’ 14th win in their 15 home games.
Oilers coach Benji Medure had to kickstart the team’s cold engine that had not not been driven in a game for 14 days between the May 19 loss and the first game of the SoCal regional on June 2.
“It took a while,” Medure said. “Everybody was all in to play. But it took a tough week of practice to get them motivated.
“There was a team meeting we had last Saturday and I was pretty animated. And then we had a very special week.”
Grindlinger said he felt “on top of the world.”
“To win this with my guys and also my coaches is great,” Grindlinger said. “It means everything.”
Cathedral Catholic finished 28-7. The Dons beat CIF-SS Division 1 champion St. John Bosco and La Mirada in the first rounds of regional play, both away games for them, to advance to Saturday’s championship game.
La Mirada was the team that beat Huntington Beach, 11-1, on May 19 in third round of the CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoffs. CIF-SS Division 1 semifinalists are invited to play in the CIF SoCal Regional playoffs.
The third round was two rounds shy of the semifinals.
As often happens in baseball and softball, enough teams declined the invitation to the SoCal Regional Division I playoffs that an invitation was extended to Huntington Beach, an invitation the Oilers accepted.
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Huntington Beach also had to win two away games to get to Saturday’s SoCal Regional final. The Oilers went to San Diego to beat Patrick Henry, 10-3, then traveled northeast to beat Corona, 11-3, in the semifinals.
The Oilers had their ace, Grindlinger, available to start Saturday. He was the the Sunset League MVP and the senior left-hander had a 6-0 record and a 0.86 ERA going into Saturday’s game.
But, as Oilers pitching coach Adam Springston explained later, it was decided that junior lefty Duncan McLeod would start against Cathedral Catholic. McLeod excels at the off-speed stuff that Huntington Beach coaches concluded would be difficult for Cathedral batters.
It was. McLeod, with eight varsity innings this season on his stat sheet going into Saturday, pitched the first two innings. He gave up two hits and struck out four.
Mason Tapia, a senior right-hander, pitched the third, fourth, fifth and sixth innings for Huntington Beach. He gave up no runs and two hits and was greeted enthusiastically when returning to the Huntington Beach dugout after the final out of the sixth inning and the Oilers hanging on to a 2-0 lead.
Part of the enthusiasm was because the players knew Grindlinger had warmed up in the bullpen to pitch the seventh and final inning. When Huntington Beach scored three runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to extend the lead to 5-0, Grindlinger was not needed.
But when Cathedral scored two runs and had the bases loaded with two outs, Grindlinger took the mound to finish the game.
Grindlinger struck out the first Cathedral batter, Joshua Priest, he faced, but a passed ball on strike three enabled Jose Partida to score to make it 5-3 and allowed Priest to safely reach first base.
Grindlinger struck out the next Cathedral batter to secure victory.
It turned out that the Oilers needed that three-run sixth inning. They scored the inning’s first run when Dane Cunningham walked with the bases loaded, added another on Sol Moriyama’s RBI single and got the third run when pinch-runner Charlie Henderson scored on a wild pitch.
Grindlinger, batting second in the order, blasted a fastball over the right-field fence for his first-inning home run that followed leadoff batter Parker Leoff who was hit by a pitch for the early 2-0 lead.
Grindlinger started this school year as a junior. He reclassified as a senior to make himself available for next month’s MLB Draft and, if that does not work out, get himself early to the University of Tennessee where his older brother Trent is on the baseball team. Trent Grindlinger was the All-Orange County first-team catcher last season.
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