Vikings slide to victory Baseball drops to 9-21 in season

BLAKE WILLIAMS Sports Editor @BlakeMWilliams_

The Brahmas were once again led by a strong pitching performance, but the offense faced a dominant starter and a questionable call as they lost to Long Beach City College on Monday, April 15, at Joe Kelly Field.

Making his first start on the mound, Michael Roth pitched eight innings and allowed three runs on five hits, but only one was an earned run.

“I was a little nervous coming into it,” Roth said. “I’ve been here before but I was really feeling it in my warmups and I just rolled with it.”

With multiple games this week, head coach Bill Picketts said he would’ve been happy if Roth went just two or three innings.

“For him to do that takes a whole lot of stress off me because I was really worried about if we were going to have enough innings to go this week,” Picketts said. “So that was huge. Regardless of if we won or lost, that was probably the most important part of this week.”

Unfortunately for Roth, he took the loss as those three runs were all Long Beach needed in their 4-1 victory.

Long Beach starting pitcher Matt Stearns took a no-hitter into the eighth inning and only allowed one unearned run.

The run came in the seventh inning when Hakeem Yatim reached second base on an error, which was re-scored as a double the following day, and Zach Kaminkow later grounded out to drive Yatim in.

The no-hitter was broken up in the eighth inning by pinch-hitter Nolan Bodeau as he hit a single into right field.

“I just came in off the bench, I didn’t really know how this guy threw and he spotted me up pretty good,” Bodeau said. “I got to a deep count and he threw me a really good slider on the outer half and I poked