MAJOR LEAGUE: Petaluma reaches finals of wild Section 1 Tournament

Lightning struck twice on the same diamond Tuesday evening, but this time it was the folks in the other diamond who got burned.

In a game that was eerily similar to the one the same two teams played Sunday, the Petaluma National Major League All Stars held off the Napa National Stars, 11-10, in eight heart-stopping innings to advance to the championship game of the Section 1 Little League Tournament being played at the Rincon Valley complex in Santa Rosa.

Petaluma was to play Vacaville Central Little League on Wednesday. Results of that game were not available at press time.

Since Petaluma went into the game with one loss and Vacaville was undefeated, the Nationals not only had to win Wednesday, but repeat with a win Thursday to capture the Section title and advance to the Northern California Championships in Fresno.

Petaluma lost Sunday’s game when Napa rallied for four runs in the last of the eighth, and the Napa team seemed on the verge of repeating those heroics Tuesday, scoring four to cut the Petaluma advantage to a single run in the last of the eighth inning.

Napa had the potential tying and winning runs on base when Petaluma shortstop Nate Zimmerman, a tournament-long standout with his bat and glove, abruptly cut the rally short and ended the game with a double play, smoothly handling a grounder, stepping on second and firing to first baseman Mark Wolbert to keep the Petaluma comeback express rolling.

The game was an extremely well-played and well-pitched contest between two evenly matched teams through the first five innings with Napa left-hander Jackson Cole and Petaluma’s Zimmerman matching out for out.

A perfectly executed double steal and a two-run homer by Louie Canepa gave Napa a 3-0 lead that held until the fifth inning when Petaluma’s Matt Baumsteiger, who earlier had made a fantastic diving catch in left field, slammed a two-out, two-run double.

Still, Napa was leading, 3-2, when Cole had to leave the game in the sixth inning as he reached his allowable pitch count.

Batting against Napa relief pitcher Canepa, Zimmerman repeated his game-saving heroics of Sunday with a two-out, two-run bomb over the center-field fence to give Petaluma a 4-3 lead and stage a wild finish that dragged on as the sun began to dip behind the trees in center field.

Napa eked out a run on Cole’s single up the middle to tie the game in the bottom of the sixth.

A pair of walks and a bloop single set Petaluma up for a clutch two-run single by Wolbert and a 6-4 lead in the top of the seventh.

Napa battled right back. With two outs in the last of the seventh, Eli Rojas belted a double to center field to drive in two runs, tie the game again and keep the game going.

If the previous seven innings were wild, the eighth was unworldly.

Singles by Luke Reavis and Nick Kelly and a pitch that thumped Devaneaux Sagaral in the helmet loaded the bases for Petaluma in the top of the inning, and Rocco Palmini promptly unloaded them with a big fly that cleared the right-field fence for a grand slam and a 10-6 Petaluma lead.

Wolbert followed with a monster blast for what looked like a surplus home run of his own.

That surplus proved vital as the gutsy Napa team got on a roll in the bottom of the inning. Four hits and a walk produced four runs and there were runners at first and third with just one out with the Petaluma lead at one when Rojas bounced a grounder to Zimmerman.

He hit it to the wrong defender. The sure-handed Petaluman snatched up the grounder, lightly touched second and gunned to first.

Almost before anyone could comprehend what had happened, it was over and Petaluma lived to play another day.

Napa 10, Petaluma 9

Petaluma’s Section opening game on Sunday morning (stretching into Sunday afternoon) was one for the books. Unfortunately it was a book that had an unhappy ending when Napa’s National League scored four times in the last of the eighth inning for a 10-9 victory.

The game-winning run trotted home from third base when the potential third out of a tie game was misplayed in the Petaluma outfield.

The final hurt ended a wild game that made up in barely tolerable tension what it lacked in sharpness. Although both teams made some exceptional plays, both also made costly misplays, many coming at the most inopportune of times.

Each side had some clutch hits, including dueling game-saving three-run home run blasts.

And, each side pitched everyone except the team grandmother, and she was warming up in the bullpen when the game ended. Petaluma sent six players to the bump, while Napa used seven hurlers.

For Petaluma National fans, each inning seemed to bring either joy or despair.

Palmini started the fourth inning by clearing the center-field fence barrier and David Cook and Spencer Norman followed with back-to-back doubles to tie the game at 3-3.

But Napa battled back in front, and Petaluma was trailing, 6-3, and down to its last out in the top of the sixth inning when Wolbert hit a ground ball to shortstop that went right through the Napa defender. Zimmerman followed by lifting a monstrous three-run, game-tying home run over the center-field fence. Wyatt Davis then hit a shot that sizzled away from the Napa outfield and sent him flying around the bases, only to be tagged out at home plate.

Wolbert led off the top half of the eighth inning with a soaring home run to center field to put Petaluma in front, 7-6. Two more runs followed on hits by Davis and Sagaral and Palmini’s sacrifice fly for a 9-6 advantage.

Cole cleared the center-field fence with a game-tying three-run blast for Napa in the last of eighth. Bradley followed with a single. Two outs and a walk later, Jorge Lopez-Rion ripped a shot to the outfield that eluded the National defender and it was all over.

Petaluma 10, Tiburon 6

The Nationals bounced back from the hurting defeat to earn their first section win with pitching and defense.

Petaluma backed pitchers Reavis and David Cook with superb glove work to eliminate Tiburon Peninsula, 10-6.

Cook, who had thrown just 18 pitches against Napa, took over with no outs in the second inning, and he escaped a jam with the help of a leaping snare of a line drive that shortstop Zimmerman turned into a double play by catching a runner off third.

Cook then pitched three strong innings before giving up a three-run home run to Tiburon’s JP Oglin in the sixth inning.

By then, the Petalumans had already scored nine runs and only needed one out to secure the win. That out came, appropriately, on a grounder to Zimmerman, who was a glove standout the entire game. In addition to the line-drive snare, he participated in two other double plays, turning one himself on a ground ball that he grabbed, stepped on second and fired to first.

He also contributed two hits and two runs to a Nationals offense that should have scored more than the nine runs it put on the scoreboard.

Petaluma, unofficially, had 13 hits, but left eight runners stranded in its five hitting innings.

Big inning for Petaluma came in the second, when it scored four runs with Baumsteiger, Norman, Wolbert, Davis, Reavis and Enzo Scaccalosi all contributing hits.

Three of what proved to be needed insurance runs came in a walk- and wild-pitch fueled fifth-inning rally. Zimmerman had the only hit in the surge, but Norman, Davis and Liam Gotschall all patiently waited out walks to aid the rally.