Naperville Central's Mr. Clutch comes through again
Right man. Right time.
Naperville Central baseball fans buzzed as Ryan Walsh approached the plate with the bases loaded in the bottom of the sixth inning, the Redhawks trailing Plainfield North by a run.
The senior, aka "Mr. Clutch," fouled off a Scott Vachon fastball, then timed a curve and smacked a hard bouncer between third and short. Marc Mantucca and Bobby Czarnowski sprinted home with the tying and winning runs in No. 1 seed Naperville Central's 5-4 victory Saturday over No. 2 Plainfield North at Joliet Junior College, where conditions moved the Class 4A Plainfield South sectional championship.
"It is almost (as if) the kids are expecting it," coach Bill Seiple said of his catcher's heroics.
Driving in his sixth and seventh runs in four playoff games, Walsh's single paced the Redhawks' second straight sectional title and third in five years. Naperville Central (35-4) advances to the Illinois Wesleyan supersectional against the O'Fallon-Minooka winner. That game was suspended until Monday with Minooka leading 4-1 after two innings.
"I guess in those big situations I get the adrenaline going," said Walsh, who rapped a game-winner against Benet in Naperville Central's playoff opener. "I kind of like coming up in those kinds of situations.
"This whole playoff I just started seeing the ball at the right time, and I've got hits when we need to and picked our team up. It feels really good."
The Redhawks' Matt Cmiel singled to start the bottom of the seventh, but Tigers catcher Zach Pacanowski erased him trying to steal. Mantucca and Czarnowski reached on errors, then the St. Xavier-bound Vachon (8-1) plunked Eric Linne in front of the opportunistic Walsh.
Three errors a side and 5 unearned runs meant neither defense shined. That was to be expected, figured John Darlington, coach of Plainfield North (30-7).
"Everybody's a little emotional, a little nervous. That's going to happen in games like this," he said. "But you've got to be able to battle through it, get the hits when you needed to, and they did."
Naperville Central led 1-0 after two innings, Czarnowski reaching third on a deep dropped fly then scoring on Linne's sacrifice fly.
Plainfield North nearly knocked out resilient Redhawks pitcher Dan Ludwig (8-0). Sean Renzi led off the fourth inning with a triple off the right-field fence. Seven batters later Plainfield North led 3-1.
"We were close," Seiple said. "We were ready to go to Mason (Hallett) in the fifth inning, but (Ludwig) had an inning where he saw the two, three, four, five (hitters), he had a real good inning, and it looked like he settled in."
Ludwig said: "At the beginning usually I rely on my curveball pretty heavily, and this was a good-hitting team for the curveball. So we had to adjust, and it took a couple innings to finally figure out what worked."
The junior lefty allowed 9 hits but walked none while striking out six. In the seventh inning Ludwig mixed his fastball and changeup to end it on 10 pitches.
Czarnowski's fielder's choice and Shane Conlon's double forged a 3-3 tie after five innings. Plainfield South's Brad Porter led off the sixth with his second double, and stole third. On a fly caught on the run by Czarnowski in right field foul territory, Porter tagged and score for a 4-3 Tigers lead.
"A piece of me would have liked to have seen Bobby maybe let that go," Seiple said. "But you know what? Bobby's going to catch the ball and maybe he's thinking we're going to get two in the bottom of the sixth, I don't know."
He wouldn't have been alone.