The midpoint of the California Collegiate League season came as June turned into July, and over a three-day period the league-leading Healdsburg Prune Packers (13-3) met the fourth-place Sonoma Stompers (7-9) for wine country bragging rights.
If their respective position in the CCL standings were the only criteria, one might have expected a sweep. But over the previous series the Packers had shown weakness against their second-place league rival, the Walnut Creek Crawdads, losing two in a row, both games played in Concord, the Craws’ home field.
The series with the Stompers also included two games on the road, at Sonoma’s Arnold Park (another historic field, this one dating to 1950). So nobody was taking anything for granted, and the Packers came to play and to win.
The first game, on Friday, June 30, was played in Sonoma. Both teams traded zeroes through the first three innings before an RBI groundout in the fourth gave the Packers the 1-0 lead. But in the bottom half of the inning, the Stompers tied the game with a solo homer from Xabier Iparraguirre, a feat they repeated in the next inning when Tyler Martinez homered for a 2-1 lead.
Then the Packers found their swing. Blake McDonald recorded his fourth RBI in six games with a single to score Kyle Russel in the sixth inning to tie the game at two each.
Hunter Dorraugh, who was hitting nearly .500 heading into the game, slammed a go-ahead two-run homer with Robbie Hamchuck on base in the seventh to give Healdsburg the 4-2 lead. Cameron Nickens hit his team-leading fourth homer of the season in the eighth before the Pack escaped a bases-loaded, two outs jam in the ninth to hold on for a 5-2 win.
The next day, July 1, the Packers returned to the warm embrace of Rec Park, and rewarded fans with a dominant performance. They started right out of the gate with a 3-run first inning behind the home run swings of Damian Bravo and Nickens—his second in two days—with Will Hodo aboard.
Things were even crazier in the fifth inning when the Pack sent 10 men to the plate to score 7 runs. Bravo hit a two-run single, and Will Hodo hit a two-run home run in the inning, and heads-up baserunning and a Stompers error added up to the rest.
That big inning put the Pack up 13-0 over the Stompers, who could only hang on to finish the game.
Right-hander Michael Rice did not allow a hit until the fifth inning, and Packers pitchers only allowed two hits on the night for the shutout win.
Sunday the two teams returned to Sonoma for a day game, but Healdsburg kept up the pressure with a bases-loaded single from Hodo to score Bravo for a 1-0 lead. In the third inning, Hodo crushed a three-run homer, complete with a massive bat flip. The homer marked his sixth hit in six at-bats, totaling eight RBIs during that streak.
But the never-say-die Stompers came back with a two-run homer in the fifth from Noah Rabin, and added another in the sixth to cut the Packers’ lead to 5-3.
After two scoreless innings, Jayden Duplantier recorded his first RBI as a Packer in the ninth with a double to score Hamchuck. Sonoma cut Healdsburg’s lead back to two in the bottom half, as Hamchuck in center field made two errors that brought Michael Bell into scoring position. But the game ended with the Packers on top, 6-4, giving the Packers a three-game sweep.
The Prune Packers winning record this season can be attributed in part to their two previous years as CCL champions, which makes playing for the Pack an attractive goal for college athletes. In fact, two of last year’s Sonoma squad, Alex Leopard and Connor Charpiot, now play for the Packers. And no fewer than a dozen Packers on this year’s roster also played on last year’s championship team, though most of them are seniors and won’t be back next year.
But next year is 11 months away: The Prune Packers still have to get through the rest of the month, and put the hungry Crawdads in their place before heading for SoCal for the championship series.
Aaron Arnstein of the Prune Packers communications team contributed to this report.
