The pitchers were a bright spot, however. Senior right hander Tomas Sanchez, senior southpaw Gaston Guibert and junior lefty Evan Brydon put on their usual show of making a mockery of batters in all four of the games. In total, they had 18 strikeouts and gave up a total of only nine runs, four or five of which were actually earned. This was a significant accomplishment, considering that while AAA players generally act like drunken piñata hitters, these batters were some of the top hitters in the state.

The Cardinals didn’t go home from San Diego entirely empty-handed. After losing the first three games, they rallied themselves together and won their final game against Morse High School, 4-1.

Upon their return from San Diego, the Cardinal bats awoke and bashed the Wallenberg Bulldogs into submission, cruising to an 11-1 victory with strong pitching performances from seniors Matt Ng, Tomas Sanchez and James Burke on April 12.

The next day, the boys played Mountain View High School, where they suffered an 11-5 loss. Brydon, the team’s ace and most reliable pitcher, did not have his best outing, but the rest of the team didn’t help him out much either.

“We didn’t execute defensively or offensively,” sophomore first baseman Narin Leninger said. The Cardinals clearly need some sort of wakeup call. For too long has this lack of execution gone on. The team needs someone to step up and take control and say “Guys, we are going to get smashed every game if we don’t pick up our play.” Hopefully, this will happen sooner rather than later so the Cardinals can bring the championship trophy back to the glass cabinet in the main hallway where it belongs.

On a brighter note, the Cardinals were virtually indestructible prior to the San Diego trip. They won two big matches against the Balboa Buccaneers, at that time the top team in the league, on March 28 and 29.

In their March 28 game, the Cardinals won 12-2 with a star pitching performance from Brydon and strong hitting from Newman and junior second baseman Derrick Figueras. After a silent first inning, the Cardinals lit up the Balboa pitcher with a six-run second inning. Remarkably, they scored all of their runs in the inning with two outs. From then on, the Cardinals never relinquished the lead and finally ended the game on an RBI single up the middle from junior left fielder Nick Rosenheim.

The true epic lay in the next game, when senior southpaw Elan Lavie, who was diagnosed with elbow tendonitis last season, started his first official game in nearly a year — his last appearance had come against Lincoln on May 7 in last year’s semifinal contest. Lavie went seven innings, allowing only two runs and striking out six Buccaneers. He also had an RBI single to add to the Cardinal total of five. Newman also contributed as usual, hitting his first homerun of the season in the seventh inning.

With consistent efforts from Lavie, Newman, Brydon, Figueras and Guibert, combined with teamwork and a positive attitude, the Lowell team has the potential to be invincible. Look to see hints of this invincibility in their next game at 3:30 p.m. today at Big Rec against the Wallenberg Bulldogs.