Zamora gets his chance on the mound

RIO RANCHO – It was a moment of levity Saturday afternoon during the New Mexico High School Coaches Association Class 1A-3A Red-Green All-Star Baseball series.

Red coach Ian Maestas of McCurdy, marched down the dugout at the Cleveland High School baseball stadium, saying, “Yes coach, I can pitch. Okay, go pitch. Great coach. This will be my first time pitching all season.”

Maestas slapped his forehead and laughed as he joked with Magdalena’s Joseph Zamora.

“Well,” Maestas said, still chuckling, “You were throwing gas. But nobody knew where it was going.”

Zamora was part of the Steers 1A state championship winning team and the 6-foot, 5-inch slugger was a natural first baseman on a squad with a loaded pitching staff that need didn’t him on the mound this year.

“You know, I wanted to pitch all season, but I had one job, and that was play first,” Zamora said. “And I was fine with that, whatever my coach needed. And I asked my coach here if I could pitch. And he said, Okay, and I got to pitch.”

With the trio of Josiah Candelaria, Shane Montoya and Mathew Lopez ably filling out the rotation, Magdalena only allowed 29 earned runs all season.

“Oh, yeah, it’s pretty impressive,” he said of the Steers pitching.

So he was happy to get one last chance on the mound in a game like this, which brought together the top 40 seniors from the three classes from across the state.

“It was fun,” Zamora said. “It’s always fun to come out and play with the best of the best in the state, 1A through 3A.”

Fellow Steer Javen Tafoya joined him on the Red squad, while, perhaps for the first time in their careers, Ayden Herschbach was in the opposing dugout.

“It was different,” Zamora said. “We were talking about that when I was on second, how weird it was being on different teams.”

The trio has played baseball together since kindergarten and has also been mainstays on the Magdalena football and basketball teams together.

“It was fun because it’s fun playing against guys you never play against,” Tafoya said of opposing Herschbach. “Especially whenever you know he’s batting and one of our guys is pitching against him, you know, it’s fun. It was fun to play against him.”

Tafoya and Zamora each participated in swapping jerseys with teammates, a long-standing custom dating back to when the series pitted north versus south players.

Tafoya ended up in the shirt of Matt Borde of rival Mesilla Valley.

“I never thought in my life I’d wear a Mesilla Valley jersey,” Tafoya said with a smile.

But, he added, that was the one of the best parts of the weekend.

“Oh, man, it was a great experience to come out here and play baseball one last time and just meet a bunch of new baseball players from all around the state,” Tafoya said. “Different talents, different skills. Yeah, it was good. It was a good experience. There’s a couple of boys on here that used to be my rivals, so I thought it’s gonna be a little salty, but we got along good with each other.”

In the end, Herschbach’s Green team recovered from a shellacking in the Friday opener to come back and sweep a doubleheader Saturday and take the series 2-1, but that hardly mattered in the grand scheme of things.

For both Tafoya and Zamora, who will be attending Doña Ana Community College together, getting the chance to don the Steers uniform one last time and share it all with like-minded players from around the state was a lifetime experience.

“Meeting all these new baseball guys and just, yeah, that’s probably the best thing is just meeting new friends, friends you’ll have forever,” Tafoya said.

And Zamora added, “Just meeting all the new people and you make new friends here, and that’ll last forever. So that’s all it’s about, is having fun and making new

friends.”