HARLINGEN — After last week’s loss to Weslaco East, San Benito head baseball coach Ramiro Partida wanted his Greyhounds to get back to the fundamentals of the game.
In that game against the Wildcats, the ’Hounds committed five errors and 10 walks. Tuesday night’s contest against the Harlingen South Hawks was completely opposite.
San Benito had two walks and just one error as the Greyhounds got their first win of the District 32-6A season in a 6-1 victory over the Hawks at Harlingen Field.
And as Coach Partida pointed out, the team just got back to having fun.
“We talked to the kids and we said to ourselves ‘we’re not a bad team, but when you allow teams to hang in the game they’re going to hurt us,’” said Partida. “But today we fought and we never gave up and the last inning we fought to the end and we scored five runs.”
In the first inning, the Greyhounds got on the board first with an RBI single from Tony Gonzales that brought home pinch runner Albert Mercado to take an early 1-0 lead.
However, South responded with an RBI single of its own as David Torres drove in Alex De La Cruz to tie the game at 1-1.
After six scoreless innings, the Greyhounds scored five runs in the top of the seventh to break the deadlock.
With bases loaded and one out on the board, Nate Garcia crushed a ball to left center field for a two-run RBI that brought in Danny Dial and Ivan Garcia, giving the Greyhounds a 3-1 lead. San Benito scored three more runs from Tony Gonzalez, Jerry Delgado and Pedro Gomez to close the seventh up 6-1.
“Before the seventh I got the kids together and told them it’s our time,” Partida said. “This is the time that the other teams jump on us, now it’s our turn.
“I told them why can’t it be us? Why does it have to be everybody else? This time it was our turn.”
After the game Partida couldn’t praise Nate Garcia enough.
“Nate Garcia pitched a heck of a game today and I think it was all him today,” he said. “He’s struggled the past couple times coming out but we had five pitchers in the bullpen but he was the one that won it. So we knew he was going to give us a good inning and we were hoping he would give us five, but he pitched seven.”
