Prep baseball: Vacaville baseball revels in keys as the Bulldogs aim to make a run
.jpeg "Vacaville coach Stu Clary hands out keys after the Bulldogs won a playoff game on Tuesday, May 10, 2022.")
After every victory, Stu Clary reaches for his bucket of goods in the dugout. The Vacaville High School baseball coach pulls off the top and retrieves a handful of small, individual keys. In postgame sessions in the outfield, home or away, Clary hands them out to exalt in the day’s success.
Keys to success, if you will
On Tuesday afternoon in West Sacramento, the Bulldogs earned plenty of the jingle, scoring seven runs in the top of the seventh inning with two outs to defeat River City 8-2. The Sac-Joaquin Section Division I playoff opening victory was capped by an ecstatic alumni coach handing out keys like an auction sale.
“Oh, I love doing that,” Clary said. “We appreciate what our players do.”
Aidan Russell earned his keep. The San Diego State-bound ace pitched admirably and in discomfort in countering River City’s Cal Poly-bound ace, Freddy Rodriguez, who struck out nine and tossed five scoreless innings. Russell earned the victory with five shutout innings of four-hit ball in stalling out a prolific Raiders team that reached the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons. Russell wasn’t always sharp, but that’s a credit to the plucky Raiders of the Metropolitan Conference and also the result of a an irksome blood blister that formed in the early innings on the index finger of his pitching hand.
“Aiden worked five tough innings for us, and he had blood on the ball after it popped in the third inning,” Clary said. “He’s one tough kid with brass (baseballs). He told us during the game that he was fine. We knew he wasn’t fine. He lost some command and velocity with that blister, but he gutted it out.”
Said Russell, “I felt the blister coming on. I was going to stick it out. This might be the last time I start a high school playoff game, so I wanted to find a way.”
That’s what the Bulldogs have done over the years. They find a way. In 2017, top-seeded Vacaville lost to Del Oro, 3-2, in a playoff opening stunner. In 2018, the program won a school-record 26 games and then stormed through the playoffs as a lower seed, including bouncing three-time defending D-I section champion Elk Grove. The Bulldogs capped that campaign by winning the program’s first section banner in the sport.
In 2019, life was even better for the Solano County school. Vacaville went 31-2 with two one-run losses, repeating as section champions. COVID-19 wiped out the 2020 season, and the 2021 campaign was limited to a reduced schedule, with no section playoffs.
So here come the Bulldogs at a curious and dangerous 15-14, with the most misleading win-loss total around. Vacaville played a murderous nonleague schedule outside a Monticello Empire League slate dominated this spring by Vanden and Rodriguez of Fairfield, including taking on area heavies Del Campo, Whitney and Davis and Northern California powers Clayton Valley Charter of Concord and Cardinal Newman of Santa Rosa.
Now the No. 9-seeded Bulldogs head to Elk Grove on Thursday for a second-round game at top-seeded Franklin, which moved to 22-5 after beating Chavez of Stockton 12-1 in a playoff opener.
“The playoffs are a different animal,” Clary told his team. “Anything can happen.”
Russell saw things happen as a freshman, when he watched with wide-eyed wonder as the varsity baseball team stormed to championships.
“Kids look up to the varsity players as rock stars,” Clary said. “All of these guys were eighth graders or ninth graders when we won it all in 2019, checking out our games.”
Russell is that star now. He has the postgame hardware to prove it.
“I have six keys from this season, and they’re so cool,” Russell said. “The keys bring us together. It’s fun.”
The key fun has origins dating back to the 1960s at Vacaville. That’s when famed Bulldogs football coach Tom Zunino would hand out pennies after big wins. The school’s football field bears his name. When Clary took over the varsity baseball program in 2015 after years coaching the school’s lower levels, retiring coach Abe Hobbs left him a bag of keys that he never used, ala Zunino. The sack never got off the ground. He gave the bag to Clary, who vowed to put the keys to use.
It’s quirky and silly, but it who’s to argue tradition? Vacaville doesn’t have a veteran club, as they did from 2017 to 2019 that included eight Division I signees, but it still plays good baseball. This group is young with 14 juniors, “and we’re learning and evolving,” Clary said.
The catalysts include leadoff hitter J.J. Menesini, junior outfielder Bennie Dyer, senior third baseman Cameron Malone, juniors Lawrence Westbrook (three hits against River City) and Nathan Schnell (three RBIs against River City) and senior outfielder Caleb Morant. The sophomore is a good one -- catcher Cal Elvis, whose older brother starred at Vavaville and now catches at Cal.
“We just want to make the school proud,” Clary said.
Done. The keys to the season march on.
This story was originally published May 11, 2022 at 5:58 AM.