Burba's big hit all right with Grayslake Central

Grayslake Central's baseball team had the right guy up.

The lefty hitter who plays left field.

"Pat gets up and does what he did last year - get clutch hits," winning pitcher Justin Guryn said.

Exactly right.

Pat Burba - who else? - delivered with the bat Wednesday, lifting the Rams to a 2-1 victory over "Cinderella" Woodstock in a Class 3A sectional semifinal at Marian Central Catholic in Woodstock. Burba's one-out, bases-loaded single in the bottom of the seventh gave Grayslake Central (27-10) a walk-off win - after the Blue Streaks tied the score in the top of the inning - and earned the Rams a berth in Saturday's 11 a.m. final against the winner of today's 3 p.m. game between Vernon Hills and Gordon Tech.

"The postseason is just all about survival," said coach Troy Whalen, whose Rams rallied to beat Johnsburg 5-3 in the regional final. "The last two contests, we survived. I thought Woodstock outplayed us in every facet of the game. They were ready to play."

When it was his turn to bat in the seventh, Burba was ready to win the game. It was no surprise considering, last season, his RBI single with two out in the bottom of the sixth lifted Grayslake Central to a 1-0 win over Mt. Vernon in the third-place game at state. In the supersectional, he ripped an RBI triple against Nazareth.

Burba also drove in the Rams' first run Wednesday with a double that landed just fair down the left-field line.

He accounted for half of Grayslake Central's 4 hits.

"We were this close (to winning)," said Woodstock coach John Oliveira, noting Burba's flair double and Eric Bell's fifth-inning groundball up the middle that Rams shortstop Freddie Landers speared before stepping on second base for a forceout, keeping the Blue Streaks off the board.

Woodstock (14-19), which won its first regional championship in 22 years, didn't have a hit off Guryn (10-3) until John Kruse reached on a one-out bunt in the fifth. Starting pitcher Alex Ferguson (2-for-3) followed with a single to center, but Guryn got a popout before Landers robbed Bell of a game-tying single.

Guryn said he started to feel like he was going to get sick in the sixth inning, possibly because he wasn't drinking enough fluids.

"I was just trying to fight through it," the junior lefty said. "That was when I really had to pitch to contact."

Woodstock finally got to the Rams' ace in the seventh. The Blue Streaks pounded out 3 hits, including Jordan Sumner's two-out double, which landed just in front of a diving Burba and scored the tying run.

"We felt the pressure would be on them," Whalen said. "Our guys have been through this before, but (Woodstock) played loose and relaxed, and we played a little bit tighter than I thought we would."

Grayslake Central looked like a battle-tested team in its half of the seventh. Anthony Fitzgerald led off by getting hit by a pitch for the second time in the game. He then sped to second on Ferguson's wild pitch and moved to third on Mike Stone's bunt.

"After (Fitzgerald) got hit, everyone was up," Guryn said. "It seemed like we just had a lot of momentum on our side. Then when they threw (the wild pitch), that's when I knew something good was going to happen."

Oliveira elected to intentionally walk Justin Dooley and Jay Hoffmann (1-for-3) to load the bases, bringing up Burba.

"We wanted to put ourselves in a position where it's not a tag play at home plate, because on a tag play there are a lot of things that can happen," Oliveira said. "We would have rather gone with a force play."

Burba took no offense to the strategy.

"I was excited because even if I don't execute, I still got my teammate Freddie (Landers) behind me to knock (the winning run) in," Burba said. "I didn't feel much pressure."

Ferguson got ahead, 0-2, in the count. Burba worked it to 2-2 before hitting a groundball past a drawn-in infield and into center field, setting off a wild celebration by the Rams.

"When you get down 0-2, you don't want to get beat away, first of all, and you've got to also think about shooting up the middle or opposite field," Burba said. "I just kept being patient, waiting for a pitch that I could handle."

Grayslake Central had beaten Ferguson 4-3 during Fox Valley Conference action.

"Their kid's tough," Whalen said of Ferguson, who shut out Marian Central in the regional semifinals and drove in the game's only run with a walk-off double (the Blue Streaks' only hit) in the eighth. "We beat him twice this year and that's pretty fortunate because he can throw three pitches for strikes, and he's a competitor."