Time Expires on Hart’s Season in 12-7 Loss

There were shrill sounds all over the Hart High baseball field Tuesday.

Most of the ringing noises were literal as the aluminum bats of Fullerton High rapped out 17 stinging hits to all areas of the park.

But the loudest ring of all was a figurative one. Fullerton played the role of alarm clock in ending Hart’s dream season with a shocking 12-7 upset in a second-round Southern Section 4-A Division playoff game.

As a result, Hart, The Times’ top-ranked team, was treated to the rudest of awakenings, suffering its first loss in 27 games. Looming larger than that is the fact that the Indians were stopped three games short of what seemed almost inevitable: the championship game in Anaheim Stadium.

For Fullerton (20-7), the Freeway League champion, it all still seems a little bit dreamlike.

“You always think you can do it,” said elated Fullerton Coach Martin Luczaj, after his team stormed the field in wild celebration. “But there’s always a little doubt in your mind when a team is 26-0. Our kids just believed they could do it.”

After witnessing a power display from the Fullerton offense so strong it could light a small city, Hart had no choice but to believe it, too.

“Hey, they did a good job,” said a quiet Hart Coach Bud Murray. “But our kids did some battling, too.”

To be sure, the game was of unusually high intensity on both sides of the field. Fullerton started ace sophomore Rene Arias, who had pitched a complete-game no-hitter only four days earlier in Fullerton’s 1-0 first-round win over Leuzinger.

Hart went with senior right-hander Chris Matkin, who had an 8-0 record but had never really shown the dominance needed to subdue a wrecking crew like Fullerton.

Unfortunately for Hart, all fears were realized--early.

In the second inning, Matkin surrendered a double and single to the first two batters, prompting Murray to pull him for Jason Edwards, who is 11-0. Edwards, though was suffering from a sore arm and allowed four hits against the first five batters he faced.

By the time the Hart defense had finished chasing down balls, Fullerton had scored five runs on six hits in the second alone and effectively numbed a crowd of 600 normally raucous Hart fans.

“We needed some innings out of Matkin and we didn’t get them,” Murray said. “Jason had a real sore elbow so we couldn’t depend on him to save us. That’s the ballgame.”

Meanwhile, Arias (9-1) showed no effects of coming back so soon. In fact, for four innings the right-hander allowed only one run, handcuffing Hart with off-speed pitches and excellent control.

It was not until the fifth, after Fullerton had scored two more runs on RBI singles by Steve De Phillips and Lee Green to extend their lead to 7-1, that Hart finally reached Arias for some run production.

A two-out rally highlighted by a two-run double from Casey Burrill and RBI hits from Darin Tsukashima and Robby Davis closed the gap to 7-5. At last, it seemed, the real Hart team had arrived.

But Fullerton wasn’t about to extend Hart a warm welcome. Fullerton bounced right back with three back-breaking runs in the top of the sixth, the crusher coming in the form of a two-run double by first baseman Colin Milligan, who finished with three hits. Suddenly, it was 10-5 and the picture was gradually becoming clearer: Hart was going to lose.

Each team added two runs for the final score, and when Hart junior third baseman Dave Toledo popped out to right field to end the game, the celebration was on.

And all Hart could do was watch.

“Our kids wanted to come up here and make things happen,” Luczaj said. “We figured we had nothing to lose.”

Hart, meanwhile, lost.

“They came to play and we didn’t,” Edwards said. “And they’re going on and we aren’t.”