HILO – Konawaena, basically, had victory in its grasp at the HHSAA Division II state baseball tournament on Thursday, and left fielder Phillip Grace had the ball in his glove for the final out.
But he crashed into the fence at Wong Stadium, and the ball popped out as Grace fell to the ground and was prone for five minutes.
Joseph Ching hammered Kolu Alani’s pitch good, and Kapolei’s No. 6 batter motored around the bases for a three-run, inside-the-park homer for a 6-5 walk-off victory over the Wildcats, who couldn’t shake their season-long nemesis.
“He had it, but the ball fell out,” Konawaena coach Adam Tabieros said. “We had a bunch of mental errors. We relaxed, and they chipped away. We would get runners on, but we could’t get a clutch hit. We just couldn’t string together that third hit.”
The BIIF runner-up Wildcats (11-8) play No. 2 seed Kauai (11-2) in a consolation game at 11:15 a.m. Friday at Wong Stadium.
Konawaena led 5-0 but had a bad habit of issuing free passes that eventually turn into runs. The three pitchers — No. 1 starter Logan Canda (4 1/3 innings), No. 2 Tristin DeAguiar (1 2/3 innings) and No. 3 Alani (two outs) — combined for nine walks.
Four runs scored off walks. Also in the fourth inning, Canda, a senior right-hander, walked in two runs with the bases loaded. Konawaena’s worst enemy, those pesky base on balls, accounted for six runs.
It’s often said that baseball is a game of inches.
If Ching’s thunder shot is clobbered an inch shorter, maybe Grace, also a Wildcat football player, doesn’t have to treat the left-field fence as a tackling dummy. He’s built like a linebacker, but the fence suffered no serious damage and neither did Grace, who eventually walked off the field.
That rare inside-the-park, walk-off homer in a state tournament overshadowed the perseverance of Kapolei senior right-hander Ty-Noah Williams, who went the distance for the win and pitched through his defense’s tough day at the ballpark.
In the second inning, Konawaena scored four unearned runs off three Kapolei errors, all on throwing miscues. The Wildcats seized a 5-0 lead. But it was still early with a lot of at-bats left, and pretty much everybody hit the ball.
The ‘Cats had a couple of missed opportunities on the bases. Their third out in the second frame was a tagout after a runner ventured too far off third base. In the third inning, they had runners on the corners and pulled a double steal. But the backdoor runner (instead of getting in a rundown) slid into the tag at second base before the run came home.
Then the Hurricanes (13-0) started to show why they’re the OIA champs and the No. 3 seed.
Williams put up goose eggs over the next five innings. When the Wildcats got runners on base, they couldn’t get a timely two-out hit. In the fifth, Williams recorded a flyout with two on. In the seventh, he got a lineout to first with two on.
Grace led the game off with a walk, and Tyler Kitaoka was hit by a pitch. Instead of bunting, Canda was given the hit sign. He smashed a hard grounder to third and was out but the runners advanced.
His brother, freshman Tevin Canda, had a sacrifice fly for a 1-0 lead. Tevin Canda is a third baseman, and Kaiya Leleiwi is a junior shortstop. Both made several standout plays, but there was no defense against all those free passes.
In seven innings, Williams allowed five runs (four unearned) on seven hits and five walks and struck out just one. Only one of his walks scored. The Wildcats often put the ball in play, but the Hurricanes settled down after their rocky second inning and didn’t commit another error.
Likewise, the Konawaena pitchers had just one strikeout. Logan Canda allowed three runs on three hits and five walks and whiffed one. DeAguiar pitched 1 2/3 scoreless innings and yielded a hit and two walks.
Alani, who was in line for the save (Canda would have gotten the win), surrendered three runs on one hit and two walks. Alani, a sophomore right-hander, got two outs in the loss.
“I told him that it’s not the first time something like this has happened, and it won’t be the last,” Tabieros said. “I told Kolu what you do after will dictate your character. You can either hang your head or pick your head up, learn from it and get better and use it as motivation.”
Corey Slade, the No. 3 batter, went 2 for 4 with an RBI to lead the Hurricanes, who stranded seven on base. Slade, a junior catcher, had a run-scoring single in the fifth, a critical run set up by (you guessed it) a walk.
Alani, also a first baseman, batted 3 for 4 and scored a run. Vohn Yamaguchi went 2 for 4 for the Wildcats, who left eight on base and never got their leadoff hitter on base after the second inning.
After Ching’s blue moon special, a rare inside-the-park, walk-off homer, Tabieros could only shake his head.
“Wow,” he said, unfolding the unlikely ending in his mind. “That’s baseball.”
Konawaena 140 000 0 — 5 5 3
Kapolei 000 210 3 — 6 7 0
