Rams savor gusty fun

With winds gusting forcefully into right field Friday afternoon, the Grayslake Central baseball team didn't want to ... blow it.

Here was the Rams' chance to end their hitting and scoring woes.

"I'm no Tom Skilling (WGN's popular weather man), but those gusts had to be 40 or 50 miles per hour at times," Grayslake Central coach Troy Whalen said. "That kind of wind can be a factor. We were able to score a month's worth of runs today."

As the winds helped carry the ball further through the air than usual, the Rams huffed and puffed and blew away visiting Dundee-Crown for a 12-2 Fox Valley Conference crossover victory in five innings.

Grayslake Central (11-6) also snapped a two-game skid and was able to up its scoring average. Whalen said the Rams were averaging a paltry 3 runs a game prior to the offensive barrage.

"We're much better hitters than what we've been showing most of this season," Whalen said. "The funnest part of baseball is hitting and we've just needed to have more fun at the plate. We've needed to attack more to make that happen."

The fun quota was filled a few times over as the Rams rolled up 13 hits against Dundee-Crown. Six of them came in the fourth inning when Grayslake Central turned a slim 3-2 lead into a comfy 7-run cushion by batting through the order to score 6 more runs.

"Our hitting philosophy is to go to right field anyway, and that's where the wind happened to be blowing to today," said Grayslake Central first baseman Angelo Gargano, who went 2-for-4 at the plate with 2 doubles. "We just started hitting the ball really well."

Besides Gargano, four other Rams had multiple hits. Stefan Falbo was 3-for-4 (double), Mike Gentile was 2-for-3, Andrew Hosford was 2-for-3 (double) and Jack Karol was 2-for-3.

"Most games this season, we just kind of close our eyes and hope for the best when it comes to hitting," Whalen said. "But today we hit balls had. It was nice."

Meanwhile, Grayslake Central's pitching wasn't too shabby either.

Despite being shaken early in the game when he was beamed in the shin with a ball that rocketed right back to the mound, Kevin DeRue was solid from start to finish. He tallied 4 strikeouts and allowed just 1 walk in four innings.

"I thought my curve ball was working," said DeRue, who moves to 3-0 on the season. "And I was spotting my fast ball."

DeRue's only rough patch came in the third inning when he gave up 2 runs on 4 hits, singles by Scott Nowicke, Nick Torres, Jake Romano and Willy Larsen.

But that was quickly forgotten when the Rams put up their six runs in the very next inning. "We have to do a better job of cutting off a bad inning," said Dundee-Crown coach Jon Sawyer, whose team falls to 3-11. "When something bad happens, we can't let it snowball. We've done that all season and we need to forget about it and move on."