Emotions were boiling in the second inning after a questionable call at the plate fired up the Warriors.

Coaches were arguing with the umpires, players were screaming at the first base coach and fans were jawing at the umpires.

“It was a play at the plate,” Marvin Flores, catcher, said. “I guess he just wanted to play hard so he took me out. The elbow to my face just knocked me over. It was just a dirty play, a very dirty play.”

With the runner rounding third base and coming home, Flores was clocked in the head with the elbow; he was on the ground about ten minutes as he was kneeling down with his head on the ground not moving.

“I don’t think that guy meant to do that at all,” Nate Fernley, baseball coach, said. “The rule is if you go high on a catcher, it’s illegal, you’re out and you’re kicked out of the game so that’s what I argued. I don’t know when everyone’s emotions came into it but that’s baseball sometimes.”

The umpires ruled it a legal hit and the runner was safe at home, resulting in the first run scored for the Compton College Tartars.

It was a fitting ending to an otherwise disappointing season, as the Warriors lost to the Tartars, 10-5.

After a loss in the season finale, the team’s record for the 2011 season stands at 17-19, a drastic improvement from almost a month ago, when the record was 7-16.

The Warriors had control for most of the game and were leading 5-3 in the fifth inning when Garrett Copper, first baseman, hit an opposite field homerun that drove in outfielder Anthony Graham.

However, in the eighth inning, everything fell apart as the Warriors gave up seven runs.

“We outplayed them the eight of the nine innings,” Fernley said. “We just had a really rough eighth inning and it just ended up being that one inning that cost us the game.”

Josh Mingura, starting pitcher, pitched seven strong innings, throwing 125 pitches, and allowed three runs.

“Mingura battled,” Fernley said. “It wasn’t his best stuff game but he battled and gave us a good start all the way.”

Mingura was replaced by Jess Simpson, relief pitcher, in the eighth inning. Simpson could not register a single out and Fernley had to go back to the bullpen to bring in relief pitcher Drew Freeman.

The inning finally came to a close after 11 batters came up to bat for the Tartars, resulting in seven runs.

With the team finishing strong to end the season, winning 10 out of the last 13 games, the team looks to carry its momentum on to next season.

“We’re looking good for next year,” Graham said. “We got eight out of our nine starters coming back. The only guys who are transferring are Cooper and Andrew Pulido, who was a big key for us. But for the most part, we’ll be all right.”

With Cooper and Pulido leaving, the offseason will be the key to the Warriors’ success, as the staff will go watch high school games and try to recruit players to fill in the holes, Fernley said.

“I think the last four weeks we really stuck together,” Flores said. “Even though we had no chance to win the conference championship, we did what we had to do. We played hard every game and we battled through the last four weeks.”