Just another game, a bragging rights game, but not much more than that.

And Enumclaw won it after having watched the state's No. 1 ranked Mount Rainier Rams battle back from a 6-1 deficit after the second inning. The Hornets won it in the 10th inning, 8-7, taking the South Puget Sound League 3A/Seamount subdistrict crown at a neutral field -- Auburn-Mountainview. Saturday's game of first-place teams lasted three hours.

The Rams couldn't score when it counted, and the Hornets did.

"We stranded a lot of base runners," said head Rams coach Darren Rawie, whose team left 12 runners on at the end of innings, including two each the last four innings. Enumclaw stranded seven runners for the game and the Rams outhit the Hornets, 11-8.

But, hey, this was just one game, and the Rams have been isolated at the No. 1 spot in the state in 3A baseball almost all season long.

The Rams just dropped a game, that's all, moved to 19-2 overall, after having won the Seamount League with a 16-0 record, while the Hornets moved to 15-4 overall, after having won the SPSL 3A with a 13-3 mark. The Rams beat Auburn-Mountainview, the SPSL 3A champ, to note, last year in this crossover No.1 teams game, 6-5, in eight innings.

Despite the loss to the SPSL 3A champ this time around, the Rams have had their best season overall record in Rawie and assistants Joe Nelson and Bobby Odegaard's 10 years outstanding work together for the program. And the No. 1 3A state poll ranking has been the Rams since the second week of the high school baseball season.

So, this game carried little meaning in the big scheme of things. It meant little more than seeding as the Rams play Tuesday night at 7 p.m. at Kent Memorial Park over the Olympic League's No,. 2 seed and win to go to state. It is not a loser-out game, and it's just like Enumclaw having a game with a little lesser seed is all on Tuesday in it's opening district round of play.

So this is the best season ever for the Rams and only celebration, not isolation, should be thought of after this game for this team. But Rawie posed that question, 'Your best team ever?" had a thing to say about that prediction.

"Best season will be defined by how far we go," said Rawie, whose team has gone so far in the last 10 years, including winning the Seamount the last four years and eight out of the last 10 years and being to state eight out of the first nine years of Rawie and company's coaching.

With the first inning started off, starting with a Rams run from Kevin Smith's left-field single, Josh Potter intentionally walked and Gio Bonifacio RBI single scoring Smith to make it 1-0.

Enumclaw buzzed back in the top of the second inning, scoring six runs on five hits and no Rams errors.

The game stayed that way, 6-1, Hornets, until the Rams bottom of four when they brought seven batters to the plate and four got hits. Beginning things, and, at this point -- not earlier in the game -- the Rams dugout got really loud, with echoing, "Let's go's," and off the Rams went with Desmond Santos' single, Smith's RBI single to make it 6-4, Colton Park's single, Potter's walk. That last guy on meant two runners on the bags for next up, Gio Bonifacio.

Home run!

Bonifacio's three-run shot over the center-field fence put the Rams in front, 7-6.

The Hornets scored a run in the top of the sixth as their clean up hitter cleaned up, with a solo shot, leading off the inning and making it 7-7.

It stayed this way, tied, through the Rams' bottom of the seventh, leaving runners at second and third base stranded. In the Rams' bottom of eight, leaving runners again on the second and third bags. In the bottom of the ninth, again, the Rams left runners on the bags at first and second.

Enumclaw, meanwhile, in the top of the seventh, left zero runners on, with Jeff Larabee relieving runners one, two and three that inning and he did good work from the bottom of the third until Potter took over in the 10th. Larabee's only pitch he wanted back, that solo shot in the sixth.

So the game wore on to the all-decisive top of the 10th inning where the Hornets took advantage of a leadoff walk and a balk. The runner moved to second base on that pitcher faux pa and then a deep outfield sacrifice to left field moved the runner to third base. Next batter up dribbled the ball out to the pitcher's mound and Potter fielded it and threw to first base but the ball was dropped and the runner on third base came home to make it 8-7 Hornets.

The Rams nearly rallied in the bottom of the 10th with players screaming wildly for leadoff hitter, Desmond Santos, to get on base any way he could. And he did, drawing a walk. Smith, up next, continuing his good at-bats game, singled. Two on and no outs but the next up struck out, then a fly out, and, another strikeout ended it.

"I thought the balk would come back to bite," Rawie said. "And it did."

Then he came back to that stranded runners issue.

"I would say that everyone had an at-bat with a runner in scoring position," said Rawie.

And 12 left holding the bag, so to speak.

"We were just getting our heads down," said Bonifacio, adding, ''Not executing the little things. And little things killed us."
Like?

"Like the balk, like the two outs and the pitcher to first drop, that was a big one," said Bonifacio, the Ram team's designated hitter. "We had a lot of opportunities to score, we just couldn't do it."

Just couldn't do it. But it's not that big of a deal, this loss. Just a matter of the Rams regrouping and playing strong ball on out, which this team usually does.