Baseball: Crook gets LBCC career win No. 500 with 3-2 victory at Cerritos

Long Beach City College head coach Casey Crook earned his 500th career victory thanks to a 3-2 South Coast Conference win at rival Cerritos College on Saturday.

With 500 wins, Crook currently ranks 11th among active California community college baseball coaches and is No. 26 on the all-time coaches list. He is just the second Viking coach to amass 500 victories with the college. Just ahead of him with 513 wins is LBCC coaching legend Joe Hicks.

"There have been a lot of guys over the years that have had more to do with the wins than I have," said Crook on career win No. 500. "I'm glad we won the game. I think I'm more excited about how well the team is playing right now."

With today's win, Long Beach has won nine of its last 11 games and sits in first place in the SCC standings at 7-2. The Vikings are 11-9 overall heading into next week's three-game conference series against East Los Angeles College. Game 1 is set for 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday (Mar. 24) at LBCC.

On Saturday, Long Beach took advantage of a pair of Cerritos errors to score all three runs. The Vikings took a 1-0 lead in the top of the third inning when sophomore Robert Castaneda (Poly HS) led off with a double. He advanced to third base and scored when Cerritos shortstop Benny Arce had trouble with a ground ball by freshman Zach Wainwright (St. John Bosco HS), which brought home a run.

It became a 3-0 Viking lead when a two-out throwing error by Arce brought home freshman Stevie Castro (Wilson HS) and sophomore Justin Davis (Mayfair HS), who both singled.

Sophomore Schuyler Hill got the win to move to 2-2 after allowing two runs over five innings. Freshman Evan May tossed four scoreless innings to pick up his first save.