Sunday, June 2, 1996

Cooper's season ends with 8-0 Loss

By LANCE FLEMING
Staff Writer

MIDLAND - For Mark Martinez, it was perfection. For the Cooper Cougars, it was total frustration.

Martinez, Lubbock Monterey's ace lefthander, threw a perfect game Saturday afternoon to lead the Plainsmen to an 8-0 win over the Cougars in the Region I-5A championship game at Christensen Stadium.

Monterey, 34-3, will be the No. 1 seed int he Class 5A state baseball tournament, which will begin Thursday at Disch-Falk Field in Austin. It will be Monterey's 12th appearance at the state tournament under head coach Bobby Moegle.

The Cougars, meanwhile, end their season at 26-10 and one game short of a fifth trip to the state tournament. It was a bitter end for a club that entered the game playing its best baseball of the season.

But they were no match for Martinez who put his team on his back from the outset and pitched all the way to Austin.

"I didn't think about the perfect game at all during the game," Martinez said. "I just told myself to throw strikes and that good things would happen."

Martinez recorded nine strikeouts and got eight more Cougars to ground out. He struck out the side in the sixth and K'd the first two men of the seventh before getting Miles Durham to fly out to right field to end the game and the quest for the perfect game.

He went to a three-ball count on only two Cooper hitters - Michael Anderson in the first and Scott Harrison in the second - and consistently got ahead of Cooper's hitters.

Cooper shortstop Craft Hughes had the best chance for a Cougar hit taken away in the third when his shot up the middle nailed Martinez in the left leg. The ball caromed towards first base and
Martinez pounced on it and threw to first to get Hughes by a step.

Second baseman Kyle Frush just missed a bloop single in the sixth before striking out, and Anderson jerked a 2-1 pitch in the seventh down the right-field line that was foul by about 10 feet. Other than that, no Cougar got enough bat on the ball to threaten a hit.

"I felt so confident out on the mound today," said Martinez, who improved to 15-0 on the season. "I knew I had to go out and do a good job for my teammates. I just wanted to come out and throw strikes, let them hit the ball and get outs any way that I could."

He did just that, mixing a good fastball with a sharp breaking ball that kept the Cougars off balance all day.

"The curveball was really tough to see coming because it broke so sharply," Anderson said. "It wasn't one of those big looping curveballs. He really mixed it in with the fastball and threw it effectively all game long.

"We knew coming in that it was going to be tough," he said. "We knew about his record (14-0 before Saturday), and we tried not to let it get to us. But he just came out and dominated us."
Moegle said his pitcher's location was the key to the perfect game.

"He cut his velocity for location, and his location was excellent," the Monterey head coach said. "We had a plan going into the game, and he executed it perfectly. He kept the ball moving in and out and that was what we wanted to do. He made a couple of mistakes, but they couldn't hit him."

All the Cougars could do was tip their hats to Martinez.

"Hey, he was awesome today," Cooper head coach Jim Mavroulis said of Martinez. "He was great and there's no doubt about that."

However, Mavroulis thought his club - which had scored 58 runs and rapped out 54 hits in its five previous playoff games - would eventually be able to knock Martinez around.

"We got caught up in the perfect game in the fifth inning," Mavroulis said, "and we let it affect us. I thought we'd get to him eventually. I wasn't worried about hits; I was worried about runs. But he just did a magnificent job."

The Plainsmen got the only run they would need in the second inning when Bodie Simpson tripled to right-center field and scored on a Brian Schmitt RBI groundout.

Cooper starter Darin Janssen (9-4) continually worked in and out of trouble in the first, third and fourth innings before finally surrendering two more runs in the fifth to make it a 3-0 game. Dusty Hart tripled to left-center field to drive in courtesy runner Matt Durham, and Jeff Horn singled to drive in Hart.

Janssen was finished after the fifth, but Mavroulis wasn't disappointed in his senior left-hander.
"I thought he pitched a good ballgame," Mavroulis said. "Monterey puts a lot of pressure on teams at the plate and on the bases. Besides, when they're hitting it off the fence, what are you supposed to do?"

Kristian Allen pitched the last two innings, but was roughed up for five runs on five hits in the seventh as the Plainsmen blew open a close game.

J.R. Mize had a two-run double, Simpson an RBI single and Schmitt a towering two-run home run to right to seal the deal.

"We started a little slow offensively, which is not something we usually do," Simpson said. "I really thought this would be a high-scoring offensive game. Both teams score a lot of runs, and Cooper is a great offensive team. We just came in hoping to get one more run than they did."

They got considerably more than that, even though the Plainsmen wound up needing just one run thanks to Martinez.

"Our goal this whole season has been to get to the state tournament," Martinez said. "We're there now, but we're still not finished. I still have a lot of work to do, and this team still has a lot of work to do. But I like our chances."