James Foug may only stand a mere 5 feet 9 inches tall, but the senior centerfielder came up big Saturday afternoon.
In a game that was dominated by solid pitching, Foug had two hits, including a game-ending single in the bottom of the seventh inning, and Paly (2-3) rallied past visiting non-conference opponent Maria Carrillo (2-1) 2-1.
The Vikings entered the home half of the seventh inning trailing 1-0. A leadoff walk by clean-up man Rowan Thompson (‘13) followed by a bloop single by designated hitter (DH) Danny Erlich (‘14) set the table for catcher Alec Furrier (‘13), who drove home Isaac Feldstein (’13) on an RBI groundout.
Two batters and two outs later, the Pumas then elected to intentionally walk Sean Harvey (‘13) to face Paly’s ninth hitter, Foug.
With the score knotted at 1-1 and runners on second and third, the lefty slapped a two-out, two-strike curveball into shallow left field to cap a late comeback victory for Paly.
“I was just trying to make contact,” Foug said about his final at-bat. “And especially with two strikes I just wanted to put the ball in play and make the defense do something and luckily it found left field.”
Rohit Ramkumar (‘13), who started on the mound for Paly and tossed five scoreless innings before conceding a go-ahead RBI single in the sixth, was impressed with how his teammate handled himself in the at-bat.
“Some guys will get discouraged when they have two strikes,” Ramkumar said. “But [Foug] battled and managed to get the hit and it was a big win.”
Foug went two for three and received plenty of praise from his head coach Erick Raich for his performance and style of play.
“He’s been a grinder all year,” Raich said. “He’s the kind of guy that you look at and say he’ll beat you in multiple ways. You play back, he’ll put a drag bunt down. You wanna play up? He’ll hit the ball by you. He’s great on the bases; he’s smart and fast. He just plays hard and he attacks the game.”
While Paly didn’t overpower the Pumas offensively (the Vikes amassed seven hits, six of which were singles), Raich was very pleased with his team’s overall effort.
“I thought we finally played our ‘A’ game today,” Raich said. “We did all three aspects well. We threw strikes on the mound, we played great catch behind our guy and we were hitting the ball hard at guys. It was great to see us kind of scrap in the final inning there. We didn’t do anything miraculous, but we played Palo Alto baseball by putting pressure on the other team. This is probably the happiest I’ve been all season from the standpoint not that we won, but that we played well finally. We played the way we’re capable of playing.”
The Vikings, who started their season with three straight losses, have now won two in a row and will look to build on this momentum Wednesday when they host league opponent Homestead High School.
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