Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Cimarron’s Henderson knocks in 7

Yes, baseball is a game of inches, but it also is a game where good teams take advantage of opportunities presented to them, as Cimarron-Memorial proved Tuesday.

Ryan Henderson drove in seven runs, with four coming on a grand slam, to power the Spartans to a 9-4 Sunset Division victory over Western at Cimarron. Henderson's two-out blast in the third inning came moments after Warriors third baseman Wes Christman narrowly missed a foul pop-up off the senior's bat.

The slam erased a 4-2 Western lead and put the Spartans ahead to stay. Cimarron starter Chris Martinez went the distance to improve to 3-0 on the season, while Pat Connors (4-3) took the loss for the Warriors.

"You know, 99 percent of the time when a ball drops in that should be caught it comes back to haunt you," said Cimarron coach Calvin Valvo. "I hate seeing it when it happens to us and I love seeing it go against someone else because you just know what's coming next."

The victory kept the Spartans (5-1, 16-3 overall) in a first-place tie in the Sunset, while the Warriors of coach Jerry Reyes dropped a game back at 4-2, 13-5. The Cimarron victory allowed the Spartans to keep pace with Bishop Gorman (5-1, 21-1), which posted an 11-6 win Tuesday night at Durango (4-2, 19-6).

"Little mistakes in baseball kill you," Reyes said. "We should have been out of the inning. Then, we have two strikes on him and we throw one down the middle. But that's baseball."

After Western took a 2-0 lead in the top of the second, Henderson followed an RBI single by Alan Sagers with a sacrifice fly to drive home his first run of the day and knot the score. The Warriors picked up two more runs in the third on an RBI double by Brian Peterson and single from Connors, and carried the advantage into the home half of the inning.

With two away, Cimarron loaded the bases against Connors with a pair of walks and a base hit, setting the scene for Henderson's homer. The right fielder then completed his day with an RBI double in the fifth and a run-scoring single in the sixth. Cimarron posted 12 hits for the game.

"Our kids and our coaches were disappointed at how we swung the bat at Gorman (a 6-2 loss) on Friday when we struck out 14 times," Valvo said. "We had runners on base in scoring position and we struck out, not even putting the ball in play. We really harped on that over the past few days and we battled better today at the plate and that was the key."

Valvo's preaching certainly was not lost on Henderson.

"We wanted to prove something today," Henderson said. "We're a better team than we showed against Gorman. I really wanted to prove something myself because I didn't do anything with the bat. I wanted to show something to myself and to my teammates."

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