Flanagan Advances To 6A Regional Final With 12-2 Win Over West Broward
Flanagan’s Ricky Santiago is greeted at home plate by teammates after the first of his two home runs Friday night.
The Flanagan Falcons continued soaring high in topping their arch-rivals, the Bobcats of West Broward High School, 12-2 in a six inning mercy-rule shortened semi-final regional 6A match-up last night at Flanagan Field in Pembroke Pines.
Once again as he had done only eight days earlier, senior southpaw Mike Melendez dominated on the mound in shutting down the Bobcats’ bats, even though he was not able to match the no-hitter he hurled in that District championship game.
Flanagan left no doubt about their superiority in the minds of the very vocal local throng, scoring in all six innings in which they batted.
The game started well enough for the Bobcats when lead-off batter Dan Pardo was plunked by a Mike Melendez pitch. He made it all the way to third on an infield hit and an errant throw past Zack Collins at first base.
The confident Falcons elected to take a 6-4-3 double play, allowing Pardo to score on the play, giving the West Broward an early 1-0 lead after half an inning.
The Flanagan bats answered quickly, notched five consecutive two-out base hits to take a 3-1 lead after one inning complete.
From the second through the fifth inning, Melendez got into a very comfortable groove, yielding two harmless singles to the Bobcats.
Flanagan scored three more runs in the second inning, on the strength of a two-run bomb over the right-center field fence by Ricky Santiago and a solo shot by Danny Zardon to extend their lead to 6-1 after two innings.
A Santiago RBI single in the third inning, extended the lead to 7-1.
Still playing long-ball, Falcons pitcher Melendez stroked a solo homer to straight away center field leading off the bottom of the fourth. A Zardon single, Andres Sanchez’s second double of the game and an intentional walk to Zack Collins loaded the bases with no outs. But after an infield pop out, West Broward turned an inning-ending double play to escape further damage.
A couple of RBI singles by Santiago and Robert Collin extended the lead to 10-1 after five.
“We’re really clicking on all cylinders at just the right time,” said Flanagan Head Coach Ray Evans, of his team’s offensive explosion.
In the sixth, as in the first, Melendez got touched for a single run. Mark McGinnity drilled his second hit of the game, an RBI laser off the right field fence. That made the score 10-2 going into the bottom of the sixth inning.
When Bobcat’s relief pitcher Matt Hardy retired the first two Flanagan batters in the bottom of the sixth, it looked like the game would go the scheduled seven innings. However, Ryan Lozada had other ideas as he kept the inning alive with a sharp single to center field.
Up came Santiago, who promptly delivered the game-ending, two-run homer, sending the partisan crowd into a state of delirium as their Falcons gained a birth in next Friday’s regional championship game against Park Vista, with their 12-2 victory.
When asked how it felt coming back to defeat such a pesky foe after having lost to West Broward 4-3 earlier in the season, winning pitcher Melendez (8-2) quickly responded, with a broad smile on his face, “It feels so good. That loss changed our whole season around because when a rival like West Broward beats you, it kind of wakes you up.”
Echoing similar sentiments, one of the game’s hitting stars with a 3-for-4 night, Zardon said, “I felt confident going into the game. I knew our bats would come alive. The first two games we left left them in the ball game. We didn’t put them away like we should have.”
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