High school baseball team uses hidden-ball trick to advance to state championship
Ah, the hidden-ball trick. That perfectly legal move that's used -- often to great effect -- to catch a baserunner off-guard and record an out.
On Saturday, it worked in one of the biggest moments possible.
With a 9-8 lead and one out to go to clinch a spot in the Colorado Class 2A state final, Rye High School pitcher Luis "Junior" Ortiz caught a Hotchkiss baserunner with the following:
For Hotchkiss: Ouch. What a way to go out of a hard-fought game that included a rain delay and even a venue change (
according to CHSAAnow.com, the new stadium was better equipped to handle precipitation).
For Rye, though, it kept the Thunderbolts unbeaten and gave them a shot at their second state championship in five seasons; they had gone out in this round in the past three season. As for the final, they won a wild 12-10 game over defending champion Resurrection Christian later that day. Rye finished 25-0.
Quotes, via CHSAA Now:
"We weren't real sure if [the hidden-ball trick] was going to work. We practice it quite a bit and we ran it one time successfully, and it worked again. It's a tough play to do, and the guys executed it real well." --Rye coach Stacey Graham
"It was executed on their end. I couldn't yell loud enough [to our runner to go back]. I couldn't quite get my message relayed to the baserunner. You never want a game to end like that, but sometimes that's the way it goes." --Hotchkiss coach Blake Carlquist