Props to fellow Advertiser staff writer Stacy Kaneshiro, who compiled and wrote the baseball state tournament feature on memorable moments in today’s edition. The byline says, “Advertiser Staff,” but I believe it was Stacy — whose primary spring beat is UH baseball — who did most of the work.

Props also to page designer Paul Carvalho, who designed the prep page (as he does every prep page).

Obviously, there are many more state tourney memories and space does not allow us to run all of them. But just for fun, I’ll throw out a few more here and see if others want to add their own:

• 1987 (championship): Kamehameha rallies for two runs in the bottom of the 10th inning to beat defending champ ‘Iolani.

• 1992 (championship): Down to its final out, MPI rallies to tie the game after a shocking error that would have ended it and the Owls eventually win the game on an RBI single.

• 1993 (semifinals): After a long rain delay, Kaiser rallies from a big (10-3?) deficit to beat Kailua en route to winning the state title the next night.

• 1994 (first round): Kalaheo’s Jesse Brown outduels Waiakea’s Onan Masaoka in a midday battle of two pitchers who would become major league draft picks.

• 2001 (championship): Kailua takes advantage of a rare MPI error and rallies past the Owls in the bottom of the seventh.

• 2004 (first round): Kaiser trails Punahou 3-2 with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, but Landon Ka‘aua chops a tricky infield grounder and the throw to first is high, forcing Kelsey Ko to jump, catch it and make a sweeping tag on Ka‘aua just before he stepped on the bag. Tying run might have even been at third.

Anyway, that close play advanced the Buffanblu into the quarterfinals, and they haven’t lost a tournament game since.

• 2007 (quarterfinals and finals): Five minutes before the first pitch, Punahou ace Jeeter Ishida slips on the cement dugout floor and twists his ankle. His status is momentarily in doubt, but he ends up pitching a complete game to beat Hilo. Two nights later, he pitches six strong innings and cools off Pearl City’s hot bats to lead the Buffanblu to their four-peat.

With three ILH teams in the mix, this tournament no doubt will have its interesting matchups and tight, well-played games.

And probably more memories for us to share in future stories and blogs.

Play ball!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 5:12 am and is filed under Prep Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.