Napa wins five straight

By Matt Hanlon

Wine Country Baseball.com

ROHNERT PARK— The Knights were a struggling team. After a slew of losses, culminating in a numbing 18-0 loss to the Windsor Wonders on Aug. 5, Napa’s record was a meager 2-6.

But those struggles are long gone. Since the Windsor debacle, the Knights have quietly surged back, winning their last five games, including the most Saturday night’s game, a 9-3 victory over Sonoma.

“This team was 2-6,” said Napa manager Charles O’Hare. “We lost 18-0 to Windsor but we rattled it off. We put ourselves right back in the hunt. Sometimes it takes an ass-whooping…I’m just really pleased (with where we are), I contribute it back to that loss.”

The Knight’s offense continued to be potent, notching 15 hits in Saturday’s game. They held a comfortable lead for most of the game, but ran into a jam in the sixth inning.

A pair of errors allowed Corey Decker and Benny Soto to score narrowing the Napa lead to 5-3. The Crushers (4-9) looked to do more damage with two outs and the bases loaded when Brandon Meyers hit a hard line drive down the first base line, but it went right to O’Hare, who caught it to end the inning and the threat.

That was the last time that Sonoma threatened, as Napa broke the game open with three runs in the bottom half of the sixth. Wayne Wirt and David Heimbinger singled, Jason Zudell walked and all three scored.

Napa (7-6) added another run in the seventh as they cruised to the win behind the pitching of Pete Thorson. Thorson threw seven solid innings, striking out nine, allowing only one earned run on four hits and a walk.

Wirt, Zudell and Heimbeigner, Thorson and Kagen Davis had two hit games for the Knights.