Heads-up base running lifts Centennial to 5-4 baseball win
Centennial’s seventh-inning rally on Thursday wasn’t particularly memorable.
But Anthony Martinez’s game-winning slide sure was.
Martinez scored the winning run on Austin Kryszczuk’s sacrifice fly to shallow center field with one out in the bottom of the seventh inning, lifting the Bulldogs to a 5-4 home win over Liberty in both teams’ season opener.
“That’s an athletic slide,” Centennial coach Charlie Cerrone said. “He’s a heads-up kid.”
Martinez, a junior catcher, raced home when Liberty’s Kaeden Camat-Toki caught the ball in center field. Camat-Toki’s throw beat Martinez, but Patriots catcher James Katona had to move in front of the right-handed batter’s box to field the throw cleanly.
Katona lunged to his left to tag Martinez, who dived behind the plate to avoid the tag.
Martinez ended up a few feet behind home plate, got up and dived head-first, touching the back of the plate before Katona could apply a tag.
“I saw the throw coming in and I tried to slide outside,” Martinez said. “I missed the plate, but he missed me. I tried to put the moves on him and be safe. I’m just happy we got the win.”
It capped an inning that Martinez led off with a single to left. He moved to second on a balk, to third on Travis Rice’s sacrifice bunt and stayed at third as teammates Rene Almarez and Trevor Wright drew walks.
“It wasn’t pretty, but the ‘W’ is pretty,” Cerrone said.
Kryszczuk belted a three-run homer in the third inning, and Rice scored on a wild pitch in the fifth to give Centennial a 4-2 lead.
Liberty’s Ethan Safier had a two-out RBI single and scored on Zanden Shim’s triple to center in the sixth to tie the game. The Patriots had three runners picked off bases, another caught stealing and a fifth thrown out trying to stretch a single.
“We practice defense all the time,” Martinez said. “We were prepared.”
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Contact reporter Bartt Davis at bdavis@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4587.