BELLS: Halton’s hard work pays off

| ANDY BRONSON THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

Bells first baseman Sean Halton is one of those. His hometown of Fresno, Calif., and he plays college baseball at Lewis-Clark State College, which has been an NAIA powerhouse for decades.

Halton, 21, has an affinity for the outdoors. Among the hobbies he lists on his profile on the LCSC Web site are fishing, hunting and bull riding.

It would seem all that could translate into success on the baseball field, and it has. Through Wednesday, Halton was hitting .400 with 13 RBIs, and his solo home run against the Kitsap BlueJackets that day gave him three for the season, tops on the Bells.

More than four hours before gametime Thursday afternoon, Halton was on the field at Joe Martin Field with several teammates, polishing the fine points of his game. That’s typical of Halton, Newell said.

“He’s our best player and our hardest worker,” Newell said. “That’s a great combination for a coach.”

The 6-foot-5, 245-pound right-hander says the Bells’ current surge is a refection of the team’s unity.

“We’ve played well as of late,” Halton said. “We’re playing for each other a little bit more. In the beginning, it’s tough to come for a summerball team and have a real good team aspect from the get-go, because there’s so many different guys from different areas, with different mind-sets on what they want to get accomplished in the summer.

“But we’ve settled in the last couple of weeks, we’re playing together, playing good ball.”

Prior to Thursday night’s game against Kitsap, in which the Bells were trying to complete a three-game sweep of the series, Bellingham had a 10-13 record in West Coast Collegiate Baseball League play, fourth in the West Division but only percentage points behind thirdplace Bend (10-11) and Kitsap (12-11). Corvallis sat in first place at 16-7, but the Knights visited Bellingham for a threegame series starting Friday.

“We’re a hot streak from being right there, and I think we’re fully capable of doing that,” Halton said. “It’s just a matter of time before we start clicking on all cylinders.”

As a possible turning point, Newell and Halton each pointed to the Bells’ recent series at Wenatchee, where the Bells struggled to stay with the East Division-leading AppleSox.

But Bellingham then embarked on a 9-hour bus ride to Bend, Ore., where it took two of three at the Elks’ home field.

Halton said that’s a by-product of the Bells learning to react to adversity, and getting used to the disparate viewpoints and backgrounds of everyone on the roster.

“Everybody plays for different coaches and different coaching staffs, which brings different playing styles,” Halton said. “When you have so many different styles on one field, it’s tough to mesh.

“But I think we’re starting to come together, in terms of playing as a team, and not just trying to get your numbers, or ‘I don’t want to make this play because I don’t want to look bad’ or ‘I don’t want to make this play because I don’t want to go back to the dugout with my head down, like I let everyone down.’”

As an example, Bells pitcher Matt Stabelfeld had his best outing of the season Wednesday, no-hitting the BlueJackets for 7 2/3 innings. The left-hander benefitted from several sparkling plays by his defense.

“Great plays; that was probably the best game we’ve played all year defensively,” Halton said. “We made a lot of routine plays, but at the same time, we made a lot of plays where we’re taking away hits, and in some cases, taking away doubles.”

Craig Parrish can be reached at craig.parrish@bellinghamherald.co m or 715-2279.