Sunnyside junior Joey Molina hit his second career walk-off on Thursday night to cap a two-run ninth inning rally.
Team Teal rallied to score three runs over the last two innings to beat Team Copper 6-5 in the Garb Athletics/OC Sports Southern Arizona Division II Futures game at Catalina Foothills.
The Southern Arizona All-Star series wraps up Friday night with the Division III, IV and V futures game at Foothills. First pitch is scheduled for 7 p.m.
Before Thursday night, Molina’s only other career walk-off came against Phoenix Greenway in the 2015 state playoffs.
“I had to follow up with the hitters before me,” Molina said. “They got the job done, put the ball in play and got the next hitter up.”
Team Teal tied it up in the ninth when Sahuaro junior Jake Adams hit an RBI double. Adams then stole third before Molina singled, setting up his head-first slide to score the winning run.
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Teal players split up to celebrate with both Adams and Molina before focusing on Molina and spraying him with water. To make things even sweeter, the rally came against Tucson High’s sophomore standout George Arias.
“What else could you ask for?,” said Foothills coach Jim Baldwin, who served as the skipper for Team Teal. “Bottom of the ninth inning against probably one of the best pitchers in Tucson; everybody knows it and you win the game.
“It’s exciting to play with a bunch of kids that love baseball and every kid in the dug out loves baseball, that’s why they’re here.”
Team Teal took a 3-1 lead in the second inning but didn’t score again until the eighth, when Salpointe Catholic sophomore Efrain Cervantes hit an RBI double for his second extra-base hit of the game. Team Copper, on the other hand, scored in the second, third, fifth, sixth and seventh but couldn’t put together any multi-run at-bats.
Molina said he knew they had a good team and that anything could happen.
“We kind of felt it, that something good was going to happen and it was just fun,” Cervantes said. “We prepared with the water and celebrated.”
For Team Copper, Mountain View junior Stan Berryhill went 3 for 3 with a walk. Sahuaro junior Stockton Pringle gave Team Copper the lead in the sixth inning with an RBI single
Baldwin said they tried to split up high school teammates as best they could, in an effort to help opponents bond more.
“It’s not easy and obviously every one of these kids is a star on their own team and they get to come in here and sit on the bench,” Baldwin said. “I commend the kids that were on the bench, they didn’t get down, they didn’t pout about it, they actually were teammates and that was pretty cool.”
