San Pedro Has Grand Time in Win

Thursday was a long, tedious and tiresome day for the San Fernando High softball team.

Consider the Tigers’ plight: A two-hour bus ride to San Pedro with a driver that got lost in Pacoima for half an hour, a demoralizing 14-1 loss to San Pedro in a City Section 4-A Division quarterfinal-round playoff game and, of course, the ride back to San Fernando in rush-hour traffic on a bus that showed up nearly an hour late to pick up the worn-out Tigers.

“Oh, we’re having a great time,” San Fernando Coach Bill Reilly said sarcastically as he sipped a soda and waited for the bus.

It was the Tigers however, who were all but missing from their game with the defending 4-A champion Pirates. San Pedro pounded 15 hits and the Tigers managed only two off Petrina Martinez (12-1), a 5-foot-2, 120-pound junior who struck out 10 in six innings.

This clearly was not the same Tiger team that two days earlier upset perennial power El Camino Real, 3-2, in the first round.

“I knew the bus ride would really hurt us,” Reilly said. “We were off. Everything was a step slow.”

Top-seeded San Pedro (24-3), which has not lost to a City team in two seasons, bunched five hits in the second inning for a 6-0 lead and the rest of the game became a formality.

Victoria Brucker was the Tigers’ biggest problem. Brucker, who went three for four with seven runs batted in, hit a three-run home run to cap the scoring in the second. In the fifth with bases loaded, Brucker ripped a long line drive that dropped just inside the left-field foul line and ended up with an inside-the-park grand slam to give San Pedro a 13-1 lead.