News
Honu Hold Off BeachBoys, Clinch HWB West
Kyle Galdeira
11/03/07
The North Shore Honu scored the go-ahead run in the top of
the ninth inning to edge the Waikiki BeachBoys, 8-7, tonight at Waipahu’s Hans L’Orange
Park. The North Shore victory coupled with West Oahu’s loss on the Big Island
gave the Honu (20-8) an 11 ½ game lead in the Hawaii Winter Baseball West
Division, enough of an advantage with 11 games remaining on the regular-season
schedule to guarantee the Honu the division title, and a berth in the Nov. 19
Championship Game.
With the game tied at 7-7 in the ninth, North Shore’s
Shintaro Yoshida came home from third base on David Patton’s wild pitch to
score the go-ahead run. Masahiro Nagata paced the Honu at the plate with a 2-3
performance including a team-high two RBIs. Mat Gamel moved into a tie for the
league home run lead after hitting his seventh home run of the season in the
fifth inning off Kent Tsujimoto.
Honu hurler Shinya Nakayama improved to a league-best 5-1 on
the campaign after earning the victory in relief. The Orix Buffaloes prospect
struck out all three batters he faced in the eighth inning, and Omar Aguilar
came in to finish off the game in the ninth and picked up his first save.
Patton (0-1, 5.02 ERA) took the loss for Waikiki (14-15) who
dropped to ½ game behind Honolulu
in the race for supremacy in the HWB East Division.
Both squads return to Hans L’Orange Park tomorrow at 3 p.m.
for the series finale.
