Baseball: Bartlett outlasts Streamwood
When it comes to high school playoff baseball sometimes it's just a mere matter of surviving.
That was the case for Bartlett on Monday afternoon as it lived to play another day after barely escaping with a 6-5 win over visiting Streamwood in quarterfinal action of the Class 4A St. Charles East regional.
Cameron Mays ripped a walk off base hit into the right-center field gap to score Ryan Temesvary from third base with no outs in the bottom of the seventh for the game-winner. Temesvary had led off the inning with a triple.
The Hawks, who extended their win streak to 10, had battled back from a 4-2 deficit after surrendering 4 unearned runs on 2 costly errors in the fourth inning to take a 5-4 lead in the sixth inning - only to have Streamwood knot the score at 5-5 with a run in the top of the seventh inning.
"The message all year has been has been about being able to come back from mistakes," said Bartlett coach Chris Pemberton, whose team will play the host Saints in the semifinals on Wednesday. "Earlier in the year we might not have been able to recover after those errors, but now we are showing a lot more resiliency. In the playoffs it doesn't matter how you get it done. You are just happy if you are able to move on to the next game."
Mays was 0-for-3 before his game-winning hit.
"Ryan made my job a lot easier," Mays said. "I was just trying to get the ball in the air into the outfield to score him. Their pitcher got me pretty good the first three times up, but I felt I had a good read on him. Fortunately I was able to get enough wood on the ball to drive in the run."
The two teams battled back-and-forth the entire game. Bartlett got on the board first with a pair of runs in the first inning. Michael Prang had an RBI single and the other run scored on a wild pitch.
Streamwood grabbed a 4-2 lead in the fourth inning. Colin Caminiti and Alvaro Alvarez had back-to-back RBI singles before a Bartlett error brought in two more runs for the Sabres.
The Hawks (16-17) rallied back with a run in the bottom fourth inning on an RBI single from Scott Palmer and scored 2 more runs in the sixth inning to take a 5-4 lead. Prang had an RBI double followed by a sacrifice fly from Brad Nowak.
The Sabres tied the score 5-5 on an RBI double by Ryan Fitzgerald in the seventh inning.
Shane Donovan did an outstanding job out of the bullpen for the Hawks to pick up the win. He surrendered just 1 run in 3 innings. He entered the game in the fifth inning with runners at first and second base and no outs. However, he got out of the jam retiring the next 3 batters including the striking out the final 2 after a sac bunt put runners at second and third.
"Shane has been a reliable starter for us all year," Pemberton said. "But as a senior we knew we could count on him to come in out of the pen when we needed him. He came up big for us."
Adam Sojda went the distance on the mound for the Sabres and took the loss. Streamwood ends its season 9-23.
"It was great to see the way we battled today," Streamwood coach Ryan Lasota said. "We were hoping to get one more chance at bat but they got a couple nice hits in the last inning. It was a great regional baseball game. Hopefully this will help some of the younger guys. We have some good pieces to build on."