AMERICAN LEGION BASEBALL ROUNDUP : West’s Home Run Lifts Conejo A Into First-Place Tie With Camarillo

Apparently, it’s pucker-up time in Thousand Oaks, home of the Conejo A American Legion baseball team.

Thursday, in the fifth inning of Conejo’s 7-6 win over Camarillo in a District 16 game at Moorpark College, Conejo’s Adam West stood at home plate and peered at Conejo Coach Craig Sturges. There were two runners on base and two out.

Sturges, coaching first base, seized the opportunity. “Hey, there’s two guys out there (on the bases) who want to come home and give you a big kiss. Whaddaya say, kid?”

Smack. A towering, three-run home run past the 360-foot mark in right field that capped a seven-run inning.

Call it the kiss of death for Camarillo, which had beaten Conejo in its previous two meetings but dropped to 10-2 overall and 7-2 in district play. Conejo (12-2, 7-2) moved into a first-place tie with Camarillo.

Camarillo had taken a 2-0 lead in the fourth inning on Jon McMullen’s two-run home run, his fifth. In three games against Conejo, McMullen was seven for 11 with 10 runs batted in.

Conejo answered with seven runs in the fifth. It tied the score, 2-2, on David Skeels’ two-run double and took a 4-2 lead on Jim Chergey’s two-run single. West then added his third homer.

Camarillo cut its deficit to 7-3 on Sam Garcia’s run-scoring ground ball in the fifth, then added three runs in the sixth on Robert Sanchez’s run-scoring single and a two-run double by Ralph Guillen, which pulled Camarillo within 7-6. Sanchez and Guillen each had two hits.

Mike Lee (2-0) allowed six hits in 5 1/3 innings and Nick Brown, who earned his first save, retired four of the five hitters he faced.

Skeels, Chergey, and Ryan Kritscher each had two hits for Conejo.