Biggs edges East Nicolaus in sloppy affair

Amid all the slop — the errors, walks, hit batsmen, misplayed balls and baserunning miscues — Frank Castro salvaged a miracle.

In a game that had both coaches shaking their heads, the Biggs High shortstop made himself the hero, the walk-off preventer, the subject of a mobbing by his teammates after his game-ending gem.

Castro's diving catch of a line drive and subsequent toss to second base for a double play not only quelled East Nicolaus' comeback rally, but put the cap on a tumult-filled 14-13 Wolverines road victory Friday.

So, Biggs coach Ron Carr, sum up a contest where your team walked 12 times and wore four pitches in the first three innings, built up a seven-run lead, then had it wilt away to one before needing a highlight-reel grab to escape?

"That was one that will keep you up at night," he said of the whole affair. "I was preparing myself for a loss, and (Castro) makes a huge play, probably the biggest play since I've been coaching."

And he wasn't alone in going "all-time" on his references. His counterpart was blunt about EN miscues in the field that allowed all those walked runners to circle the basepaths with near impunity.

"This is probably, in five years of being out here, the worst defensive game we've played," East Nicolaus coach Andy Culp said. "It was just a struggle, no doubt about it ... They showed a lot of heart in the end, but if we didn't make the errors in the beginning, we wouldn't have had to worry about it."

Biggs (8-4) scored two runs in the first, three in the second and seven in the third before Aaron Cater, the Spartans' fourth pitcher of the game, started to exact some control over the Wolverines. To plate 12 of their runs, the Wolverines needed just four hits.

But while East Nicolaus (7-5) threw different pitchers on the mound to try and ebb the flow of free passes, Biggs' stable was, well, singular. On the hill for all seven innings, thirteen runs, and one line drive off the foot that caused him to limp was senior Adam Swanson.

When asked why the rightly was left on the mound, Carr said there just wasn't another viable option.

"No, we don't have the pitching we had last year," he said. "(Swanson) kept getting out of the inning, getting out of the inning, getting out of the inning, and we got a little lucky at the end — and it all worked out."

Barely.

Even with allowing the early onslaught of runs, the Spartans never stopped digging. They scored in every inning, led by the bat of Kevin Logsdon and the body of Everett Willey, whose triple and RBI single took a backseat to the three pitches he took — including one off his helmet.

Logsdon belted a solo shot to left field, drew a bases-loaded walk, scored two runs and would have been the owner of a walk-off hit if not for Castro laying out on the infield dirt in the bottom of the seventh.

With runners on second and third and one out, Logsdon smoked a liner that would have scored both runs if it had been another six inches to the left. But Castro snagged it, and gunned down the now overextend runner at second.

"Man it was intense," said Castro, who battled his own defensive issues before absolving them all.

Carr couldn't help but chuckle a little when thinking about that play. After everything they'd seen and endured, the Wolverines ended on a gem.

"I don't know if we'll ever top that one," Carr said.