Summer baseball: Petaluma Leghorns win 6th Area 1 title, advance to state tournament

The Petaluma Leghorns American Legion 19U team is playing deep into the postseason once again this summer.

On Monday, the Leghorns won the American Legion Area 1 Championship, beating the Fairfield Expos 5-0. It’s the sixth Area 1 title for the 19-and-under program comprised of some of the top high school and early college players from around the area.

“It’s a true testament to our league play. The teams in Area 1 are just so dang good, so it makes it that much tougher to get through that bracket,” Leghorns head coach Spencer Finkbohner said Wednesday as he drove down to Southern California for the state tournament this weekend.

The six Area 1 titles are tied for second in the state and the Leghorns will be looking to make noise once again at the state tournament, which starts Thursday at Chapman University in Orange County. The Leghorns have won five American Legion State Tournament titles since 2013, including four in a row from 2018 to 2022. They also won in 2013 and advanced all the way to the title game of the American Legion World Series in Shelby, North Carolina.

Getting back to Shelby is the Leghorns’ ultimate goal, but the road to doing so is just beginning. Two of the eight teams at the state tournament will advance to the Western Regional, which will be hosted by Fairfield. As hosts, the Fairfield Expos will automatically advance to regionals along with one other team from state, likely whoever wins the tournament if they do not.

The Leghorns will enter the state tournament as winners of seven of their last nine games. They opened the Area 1 tournament with two lopsided wins — 15-5 over Napa Valley and 15-2 over the Humboldt Eagles — before falling to the Fairfield Expos 2-1. They bounced back with a 5-2 win over the Chico Nuts and then avenged their earlier loss to Fairfield with a 5-0 shutout victory in the title game.

“Our bats were hot in the first couple games of the Area 1 tournament,” Finkbohner said. “That was nice, and then we had four hits and scored one run against Fairfield. That was a tough one there, but it was nice to get back in the win column against the Chico Nuts to solidify our way down south.”

Among the offensive standouts for the tournament were Eddy Stone (8-for-14, five doubles, four RBIs, six runs), Lucas Hermes (8-for- 16, double, triple, six runs), Nico Antonini (5-for-11, two doubles, eight RBIs), Jacob Moreda (7-for-12, four runs) and Jordan Giacomini (5-for-15, double, five runs, five stolen bases).

The Leghorns will face the San Diego Panthers in their first game of the state tournament at 2 p.m. Thursday.

Y ou can reach Staff Writer Gus Morris at 707-304-9372 or gus.morris@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @JustGusPD.