HARLINGEN — Harlingen South’s Joaquin Torralba hit a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the eighth to score Ayden Medrano and lift the Hawks over the McAllen High Bulldogs in walk-off fashion 5-4 on Friday at Harlingen South High School in Game 2 of their Region IV-5A bi-district best-of-three series.
The series is now tied after McAllen High took Game 1 of the series 6-0 on Thursday in McAllen. Game 3 between the Hawks (20-9-2) and Bulldogs (19-12) is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at McAllen High School.
The winner of Saturday’s Game 3 advances to the area round to face the winner between La Joya Palmview and Victoria East.
“We talked about it yesterday, it’s going to take everything we got. We got to kick, fight, scratch to get a W and we did enough to do that,” Harlingen South head coach Bryan Aughney said. “We took advantage of some mistakes that they made to plate some runs. I don’t think we were very good offensively early in the game. Ryan Porter came in and gave us everything he had to give us an opportunity and same with Aundre (Guadarrama) there late. We live to fight another day. We got to sleep fast, get rested and get ready to do it again tomorrow.”
The Bulldogs trailed 2-1 in the top of the sixth before a Max Villarreal single and Nate Zaragosa double set up a 2-run single by Maddox Braxton. Luis Esquivel followed with an RBI-double to left field to push the Bulldogs in front 4-2.
In the bottom half of the sixth, South’s AJ Serna singled and Josh Ruiz doubled to put runners on second and third. Torralba singled to shortstop to score Serna making it 4-3. Then, with two outs and runners on second and third, Justinray Pena hit an infield pop fly near the mound that was dropped and allowed another South run to come across to tie the game at 4-4 after six innings.
That led to Torralba’s walk-off sacrifice fly in the bottom of the eight to send the series to a decisive Game 3 on Saturday.
“It was just about going up there and competing,” Torralba said. “As I’m walking up, I just took a deep breath and cleansed my mind because keeping things simple is the best thing to do in baseball. I was just looking for my pitch — breathe, swing, see it, watch it happen and have fun.”
South pitcher Ryan Porter surrendered four earned runs off 10 hits and no walks while striking out three. Guadarrama earned the win with two perfect innings of relief with one strikeout. Ruiz led the Hawks with 3-for-5 hitting and two runs scored. Torralba finished 2-for-4 with two RBI and Medrano also drove in a run.
McHi’s Austin Ramos gave up four runs, none earned, off six hits and one walk while striking out eight in six innings. Braxton finished 2-for-4 with two RBI to lead McHi offensively. Villarreal and Esquivel also had two hits apiece.