Petaluma Nationals take section win

The Petaluma National Little League Major League All-Star team blasted its way into the Section 1 Tournament with a barrage of heavy hitting. Monday afternoon, the Nationals earned their first section win with pitching and defense.

Petaluma backed pitchers Luke Reavis and David Cook with superb defense to eliminate Tiburon Peninsula, 10-6, in the five-team tournament being contested at the Rincon Valley Little League complex in Santa Rosa.

The win followed a Sunday 10-9 loss to Napa National, the team Petaluma will play this evening as it continues to try to battle back through the tournament losers’ bracket. Today’s game will be back to a normal 5:30 p.m. first-pitch time after Monday’s earlier start.

Petaluma still has to win three games over the next three days to win the Section Tournament and advance to the Northern California Championship Tournament in Fresno.

Cook, who had thrown just 18 pitches against Napa on Sunday, took over with no outs in the second inning, and escaped with the help of a leaping snare of a line drive that shortstop Nate Zimmerman turned into a double play by catching a runner of 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 the grabbed, stepped on second and fired to first.

He also contributed two hits and two runs to a Nationals’ offense that could 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 Matt Baumsteiger, Spencer Norman, Mark, Wolbert, Wyatt Davis, Reavis and Enzo Scaccalosi all contributing hits.

Three 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 Spencer Norman, Wyatt Davis and Liam Gotschall all patiently waited out walks to aid the rally.