Sports

“Greatest loss of my career,” Coach Mike Domenichelli said. “The players gave it everything they had. The crowd was electric and it was like playing at Yankee Stadium. It was just unfortunate that someone had to lose.”

To look at the scoreboard of many recent Healdsburg Prune Packers games, one might think that’s softball being played on the field. On June 14, the Stockton Pearls fell 20-1, and the Bay Area Marauders went down 24-5 on June 15. These are scores more frequently found on diamonds where the bases are 60 feet apart, not 90. In softball, at least at the high school level, the “mercy rule” ends a game early if there’s a 10-point spread. No such rule affects collegiate baseball. 

For the second year in a row, a Greyhound won the Most Valuable Pitcher award as Eric Nielsen followed 2024's co-winner Mauro-Manos into the exclusive circle. Nielsen’s finishing record of 10 wins and 83 strikeouts led in the league and placed him among the top 10 high school pitchers statewide.

It took the Healdsburg Prune Packers less than two innings to start sending balls over the Rec Park fence. Center fielder Jonathan Kim of the University of Michigan slammed a high fly over the right field fence with two runners on, and from that point on the power-hitting Prune Packers have made hitting homers part of their game plan.

The season ends with two games against Piner, on May 7 (in Healdsburg) and May 9 (at Piner). League and division playoff schedules are yet to be announced, but the Greyhounds have had good luck in post season play in recent years, under coach Mark Domenichelli.

For the first time in Mark Domenichelli’s 16 years as a baseball coach at Healdsburg High, his team has reached the semifinals in the division championship series. That means they’re just one win away from the finals, two from the title.

The June 18 game was as dramatic as it was unexpected for the home team. The previous night, in the teams’ first meeting this year, Healdsburg built a seemingly insurmountable lead of 11-3 at the end of only five innings, and it looked like another one of those Packer blowouts...

Last Sunday afternoon at Rec Park both fans were treated to the kind of game they like: A tight one that for a while looked like it might be the third loss of the year for the galloping Prune Packers, but in the end proved to be just another number in the win column for the Pack. Plus it had 5 home runs.

The week just passed encapsulated the great baseball program built by coach Joey Gomes with the Healdsburg Prune Packers. Tons of powerful offense paired with fantastic pitching and defensive web gems, on a team built with rising stars from across the country. It is frankly surprising to see the determination and great chemistry within a team like the Packers after only a month of playing together.

It was almost game time when the fog burned off of the North Coast to reveal the newly remodeled Arcata Ball Park, where Humboldt Crabs baseball fans streamed into the bleachers with high hopes for their team to surprise the league leaders, the Healdsburg Prune Packers. It was not to be.