Trick pickoff play ends Grayslake Central's season

Austin Miller walked up to the plate in the top of the seventh inning with a chance to give Grayslake Central the lead in Saturday morning's Class 3A Johnsburg baseball sectional championship game at Tigers Field.

And then, all of a sudden, the best Miller could swing was a tie game against Marian Central.

"It was a great executed play and I didn't see it coming," Miller said as he watched a fake wild pickoff nail a runner at second base for the second out. "I had never seen it."

Miller then smashed a double off the base of the fence in left-center field to score Andrew Hosford from first.

"I hit it about as best as I could," Miller said.

But that was as close as Grayslake Central (30-8) would come to a repeat sectional title and return to the state tourney as it fell 5-4 to Marian (26-9).

"I said at the start of the year, last year we got a lot of bounces in the postseason and a lot of breaks," said Rams coach Troy Whalen, whose team took third last year. "This year from the regional championship game on every ball we hit hard found somebody.

"Hats off to Marian. They played a great game and I wish them the best of luck."

A 3-run first and an impressive start on two days rest by Elmhurst College-bound righty Dave Parr (9-2) put the Hurricanes into Monday's 4:30 p.m. North Central College supersectional in Naperville.

And an unforgettable play, which 21st-year coach Gregg Wikierak couldn't remember when it last worked, also pushed Marian into a meeting with Nazareth (28-9), which won its own sectional title 6-1 over Riverside-Brookfield.

Angelo Gargano's one-out single in the seventh was only the third hit off Parr. Gargano came out for a pinch runner and Andrew Hosford, who had a 2-run double in a 3-run fifth, was hit by a pitch.

Marian ace Dave Luczak, who threw a complete game last Saturday and 107 pitches in 5 relief innings of Wednesday's win over St. Viator, was not available to pitch. So Wikierak brought in shortstop Eli McGuire to replace Parr.

McGuire then faked a throw to second and came off the back of the mound as the shorstop, second baseman and center fielder all scrambled for the apparent wild throw.

But McGuire had the ball and tossed it to third baseman Karl Steiger for the second out. McGuire got a grounder for the final out after Miller's double.

"They pulled it out at the right time and executed it," said Whalen, whose team lost runners at first and second in the fourth when another pickoff turned into a double play. "Those are things you work on during rainy days in the gymnasium."

Parr said they tried it unsuccessfully once last season. Wikierak said he saw the University of Maine use it in a College World Series nearly 25 years ago.

"It's worked on occasion and the kids love to practice it," Wikierak said. "I figured we had nothing to lose trying it. We were fortunate it worked."

The Hurricanes were also glad Parr's stuff was working better than Wednesday when he had 4 walks and no strikeouts and threw 88 pitches in 5 innings. Parr said his start was a game-time decision and a mechanical adjustment helped him retire the first 10 hitters on only 39 pitches.

He allowed only 2 earned runs and had 5 strikeouts and 1 walk as he threw 54 of his 85 pitches for strikes.

"Coach asked how my arm was feeling and I told him I was ready to go," Parr said.

"I asked him how he felt on a scale of zero to 100 and he said 99," Wikierak said. "I said, 'Are you talking with your heart or your head.' He said with his head so I said, 'OK, fine.' He's a competitor."

A single by Scott Franzgrote (3-for-3) started a confidence-boosting 3-run first that was followed by a triple by McGuire, a double by Parr and a two-out single by Steiger. Andrew Stone added a two-out RBI infield single in the third to make it 4-0.

Matt Murphy's sacrifice fly in the fifth got the Rams within 4-3. Marian got the run back in the bottom half on Parr's groundout where the infield was in but Franzgrote scored when Gargano had to dive at first for a throw that nearly pulled him off the bag.

"We needed to play a little more sharp and crisp than we did," Whalen said.

But Whalen won't forget a senior-dominated team he said "raised the bar so high with the program." Gargano, Hosford, Mitch Tielke, Kevin DeRue, Mike Gentile and Josh DeAngelis were three-year varsity players involved in more than 70 victories.

"We've come a long way as a team and for the seniors it's a bad way to go out," Miller said. "But we accomplished a lot."