Tag: CIF SS baseball

CIF Southern Section Div. 2 baseball final marred by controversial call: Home run or ground-rule double?

California high school baseball game ended in one of the wildest controversial calls of all time.

The CIF-SS Division 2 final between Moorpark (Calif.) and Hart (Santa Clarita, Calif.) has become a headline-grabbing game that’s taking a controversial call to the national stage:

Was it a home run? Or a ground-rule double?

Watch the footage and you’ll see why settling on an answer isn’t—at least to some—the easiest of tasks.

Here’s a closer but slightly foggier look:

While it looks like the ball cleared the fence and the third base umpire signaled that it was a home run, Taylor Busch’s hit was determined to be a ground-rule double, negating any walk-off dramatics and a CIF title for the Musketeers.

The call left Moorpark with runners in scoring position and no outs—which is not a bad spot to be in when trailing by a run in the final inning (7-6)—but overcoming the elation of the game-winning blast and subsequent celebrations might have been too great of a burdensome scenario to overcome.

Read more:

Moorpark won a CIF-SS title. Then it didn’t. Controversial call leads to bizarre ending

VC Star’s Live Blog from the wild night

Hart capitalized on the second chance—also not an easy feat—and recorded the next three outs to ensure the win.

That’s equally impressive, but the controversial call heavily overshadowed all of it.

Would the CIF take a look and make the final-final decision?

As LA Times’ Eric Sondheimer noted, Moorpark had not filed an appeal because that’s not a possibility under the guidelines …

That context, too, had been given a second look.

From the Los Angles Daily News:

“Moorpark Unified School District will appeal the final outcome …We will provide more information as this process moves forward,” the district said in a statement Saturday sent on behalf of Superintendent Kelly Hayes, Moorpark Principal Zaid Bakoo and Moorpark Athletic Director Robert Dearborn.

But after all that—much like the seventh-inning fireworks—the call stood:

The final piece that got lost in the theatrics was the storybook ending the win provided for Hart coach Jim Ozella, who picked up his first CIF-SS title after a 25-year run with the program. The team won’t play in the regionals, so this win marks the 2024 finale and the last of Ozella’s career.

“It was an exciting ride,” he told Sondheimer. “It’s been a fun time at Hart having a lot of great kids. I was just coaching them up and let’s give them the experience of a lifetime. You do this as long as I’ve had with passion. Things happen. You make relationships. They put their heart into it. One of the greatest things about this whole deal is I’ve gotten text messages from hundreds of coaches. It’s overwhelming. It’s what the coaching fraternity is about.”

Something tells me … he’ll probably get a few more text messages about that ending.