LJ softball: Emmy - the story can now be told

Emmy Cardenas (in glasses, second from left)

chats with Viking teammates May 16, 2023

before a CIF play-in game at Country Day.

Cardenas, besides her own hitting and

pitching, did considerable mentoring

and coaching of her teammates in her

final year of high school softball.

(Photo by Ed Piper)

By Ed Piper

It can now be told.

Prior to Viking pitcher/hitter Emmy Cardenas' record-setting senior year in Spring 2023 of her four-year varsity high school career, whose power and timing were on full display in the CIF Senior All-Star Game at UCSD June 8, the 18-year-old had surgery on her right throwing elbow to move the damaged ulnar nerve from below the elbow to above.

It's a common injury among softball pitchers, according to her father and faithful statistician through travel ball and high school ball, Rich Cardenas.

That's why, in La Jolla's Spring games, the 5'8" hurler was limited to 30 pitches per game, then 40, then 50, and so on--and the poor Vikings would often be thrashed in later innings by their opponents. Just because Coach Anthony Sarain had no other qualified pitchers to come into games to relieve Cardenas.

Dad said he told a reporter about the situation, but I don't remember, and it certainly didn't click as I was cadging rides to games during a no-drive medical edict that lasted till the end of April.

Now Emmy is skipping the light fantastic at Winthrop University in South Carolina, so to speak, one of five freshmen on a veteran squad that will graduate a large portion of the team in June with seniors moving on from their college careers. That means even more opportunity for the hard-working Cardenas, who is a younger version of Shohei Ohtani, hitting third in the lineup in high school with her immense home run power while pitching every game--unlike the every-sixth-day regimen of the now-injured Ohtani on the Angels.

But the innings were limited, and that was the reason for the pitch limit her senior year. In the Senior All-Star Game, she pounded a double in the ninth inning that bounced off the left-centerfield wall at UCSD's softball field to drive in the go-ahead run and an insurance run for a 7-5 lead that stood up for the West squad.

The Ohtani prototype had just pitched the seventh and eighth innings and limited the East to one hit during her stint. What a game, and she was named MVP of the first game of its type in the area.