Baseball: Gosswein punctuates Barrington's MSL West title with no-hitter
Brooks Gosswein and his Barrington teammates put an exclamation point on their Mid-Suburban West winning victory Monday in Barrington.
Gosswein tossed his first career no-hitter while the Barrington bats came alive in a 10-0 decision over Fremd in 6 innings.
The win clinched the MSL West title for Barrington (22-6, 12-1) for the fourth year in a row. It also moved the Broncos into the MSL title game for the second consecutive year and a third time in the last four seasons.
"It is great," said Barrington coach Pat Wire, whose team won its eighth straight. "Our boys wanted to come out and end it right here."
Barrington will host the MSL title game a week from Friday against the East Division winner. Elk Grove, which has won the MSL championship the past two years, leads Prospect by 2 games with 3 MSL games left.
Gosswein was solid for the first time in his last 3 starts. He still picked up wins in the previous two but struggled with his control in both.
On Monday, he fanned 12 while walking two. He threw 91 pitches, with 60 of them going for strikes.
"I felt great today," said Gosswein. "I started out in my bullpen and all three of my pitches were working well. I thought today was going to be special."
The big left-hander retired the first 10 batters he faced before allowing the first of his two walks. He only allowed one other base runner and that was on an error.
"We put Goss on the mound today," Wire said. "He didn't have a good outing against Palatine last week. I wouldn't have wanted to be anybody who got in his way today. He was determined."
Tristan Michaels, who had 2 hits and scored twice, said the whole team was ready to break loose.
"It is amazing and a great feeling to win conference," Michaels said. "You could tell that there was a different persona in the dugout. We definitely wanted to come out and beat Fremd. Because they are so good, we knew we had to lock in."
Barrington gave Gosswein all the runs he would need by exploding for 5 runs in the bottom of the first.
Michaels doubled and scored on a pair of wild pitches. A single by Patrick Dehnert, one of his 3 hits, along with walks to Jimmy Day and Zach Balough loaded the bases. Jacob Chapman then doubled home a pair of runs and Jeff Korus singled in two more.
The Broncos had an RBI single by Day in the second, and a bases-loaded walk by Tyler Acosta in the first to lead 7-0.
Barrington ended it in the sixth when Dehnert, who had doubled, scored on a wild pitch. After a walk to Chapman, Blake Swanson belted a 2-run, walk-off home run.
"It felt so good," Swanson said. "There is nothing like it. It was a fastball on the inside corner and I just turned on it."
Chris Piggott said that Fremd (13-8, 8-5) just couldn't get anything going against Gosswein.
"He came right at us with fastballs," Piggott said. "You have to hit a fastball. You can't win games if you don't hit a fastball."