Super win for Kennedy, Warren

With every pitch, Warren senior Ryan Kennedy was blistering.

Figuratively, and unfortunately for him, quite literally.

Before his start on the mound in Wednesday’s Barrington sectional semifinal against Palatine, Kennedy was applying gobs of super glue to the middle finger on his right hand. His hope was that the glue would prevent the large, nasty blister on the underside of the finger from busting open each time he gripped the ball.

Kennedy had developed the blister during the regionals last week when he pitched all 7 innings against Libertyville.

What he really needed for the Palatine game was some kind of bandage or covering for the blister. But he didn’t want his grip to be affected. The super glue wasn’t ideal, but it seemed like the next best option.

Seemed is the operative word here.

“It didn’t really work that well,” Kennedy said of the super glue. “It kept coming off and the blister cut open out there and it was bleeding all game.”

Kennedy figures that some of his blood was on every ball he pitched.

“If you look at them, there was blood there,” Kennedy said with a laugh. “And there’s blood on my shirt and my pants. The thing just kept bleeding. It’s a bad blister.”

Essentially, that’s what Palatine got, courtesy of Kennedy. The Pirates were blistered badly in the batter’s box as Kennedy, blister and all, fired 10 strikeouts to lead fourth-seeded Warren to a 7-2 victory.

The Blue Devils, who improve to 22-12 on the season, now advance to Saturday’s sectional championship game and will face the winner of today’s semifinal between No. 3 Prospect and No. 7 St. Viator.

Palatine, seeded ninth, closes out its season with a 23-15 record.

“What’s great about Kennedy is that he wouldn’t have let me take him out if he needed to be,” said Warren coach Clint Smothers, who took an injury timeout early in the game as Kennedy struggled with his finger while on the mound. “We were going to ride him as long as we could and he did a great job. He competed really well.

“He did a great job early of spotting the curve ball and changing up the fastball to the curve ball. He did a great job of keeping them off balance. He switched it up nice.”

Kennedy managed to tame a Palatine team that was red-hot at the plate in its regional championship victory over Mundelein on Saturday.

In that game, the Pirates scored 15 runs on 12 hits and smoked 4 home runs, including a grand slam by Dan Haze. Against Kennedy, Haze was 0-for-1 and reached on the only walk Kennedy allowed, and on an error. And the only player to get extra bases on Kennedy was Cody Bobbit, who had a double in the third inning.

the Pirates, who’d set a school record for home runs with 33 this season, managed just 5 hits.

“(Kennedy) did a great job of mixing his pitches and sometimes that took us out of our approaches and we were late (swinging),” Palatine coach Paul Belo said. “Good pitching is going to beat good hitting.”

Warren was able to beat Palatine with good hitting, too.

After Palatine jumped out to an early 1-0 first inning lead on a Warren error, the Blue Devils came back in the bottom of the inning with 4 runs. Kevin Colburn drove in a run with a single, Alex Letto drove in a run with a sacrifice and Caleb Haley capped off the scoring in dramatic fashion with a 2-run homer to center field.

“That felt great,” Haley said of his ninth home run of the season. “We’ve been strategic with our hitting all year and it’s working out great now, too.

“Putting the ball in play early gave everyone more confidence and it gave Ryan (Kennedy) more confidence on the mound, too.”

Colburn drove in another Warren run in the third inning with a single, as did Adam Glogovsky. That put the Blue Devils up 6-2. Letto finished up the scoring when he blasted a home run over the fence in center field in the fifth inning.

“We’re very excited,” said Colburn, who was 2-for-3 on the day. “We weren’t picked to be here because we’re young, so it’s always good to prove people wrong.

“We had a lot of really good seniors playing last year who are playing in college this year and we’ve got young guys in those spots now. I think a lot of people thought our young guys wouldn’t step up, but you can tell they kind of have and we’ve managed to put together a pretty good little team here.”