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| Cornejo wanted the ball in big game for Buffalos |
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| Sports | |||
| Written by David Wolman | |||
| Friday, 26 June 2009 08:47 | |||
 Toby Cornejo has been known to deliver on the mound in big-game situations. After all, that’s one reason he’s moving on to Hutchinson Community College to play baseball this fall.Cornejo shut down Paola’s offense in a 2-0 Prairie View victory in the Class 4A regional tournament semifinals. “It was one of the better games I’ve ever threw,” he said. “Everything worked pretty well. The fastball had life. The slider was the best it had ever been.” Earlier in the season, he and Anderson County ace Mike Hermreck went head to head in an epic pitching showdown. Cornejo was impressive, allowing seven hits, no runs and one walk, while mowing down 11 Bulldogs in nine innings. Prairie View went on win 3-1 in 10 innings. Perhaps the best example of Cornejo’s dominance on the mound can be traced back to a 2007 game against Gardner-Edgerton. The Trailblazers usually had their way against the Buffalos, but this time proved to be different. Gardner cut the deficit to one run entering the final inning. Cornejo had pitched the previous day, but he insisted on coming into the game and recording the final three outs. “Toby went up to coach (Larry) Pope and told him he wanted the ball,” said Prairie View coach Jose Cornejo, who is Toby’s father. Cornejo went on to strike out all three batters he faced as Prairie View held on for a 3-2 victory. After an ankle injury forced him to sit out the final 13 games his junior season, Cornejo showed no signs of the injury this season. He was back to his dominant self, going 7-1 with a 2.59 ERA. He struck out 64 batters while yielding just 19 earned runs, 13 walks and 35 hits in 49 2/3 innings. For his efforts, he has been named the Tri-County Spotlight Pitcher of the Year. Cornejo was part of a special team. Prairie View went 18-4, won the Pioneer League regular-season title — the Buffalos’ lone other league title came in 2001, when they were playing in the Frontier League — and advanced to the regional championship for only the second time. Cornejo was one of nine seniors, and they set the tone from day one. “It was a great group of seniors,” he said. “We bought in and believed we were good enough to compete with anybody.” Ever since Cornejo was a child, he always dreamed of playing in the major leagues. He’s knocked out many of his other goals: playing high school baseball, earning all-state honors (first-team utility), andplaying college baseball. One of his current goals is to play NCAA Division I baseball. All of his accomplishments haven’t been achieved without hard work. Baseball is his passion. He either trains or plays 11 months per year. When he’s not on the mound, you’ll most likely find him in the batting cages at home, taking swings, or with his summer coaches Jamie Blueba and Brandon Johnson, working on pitching. Pitching is an area in which Cornejo has seen constant improvement. Hitting corners with regularity was something he worked on during the preseason, and that hard work paid off. “As he got older, he learned how to set batters up,” coach Cornejo said. “He never threw the same pitch every time. He had the confidence to throw a breaking pitch on a 3-2 count.” Toby is currently playing summer baseball for the Louisiana Legends, a Lafayette, La.-based team that competes against other teams in the Southeast and Northeast with college signees. “The sky is the limit,” his father said. “He can go as far as he wants to go.”
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