Borucki bounces back by picking up a bat

There seems to be no explanation.

Ryan Borucki has gone over the pitches time and time again. And yet he still can’t pinpoint exactly how he hurt himself, and on top of that how he hurt himself so badly that he won’t be able to pitch again this season.

Mundelein’s senior southpaw ace, who has already signed on to play at Iowa next year, was having a great season on the mound and was widely regarded as one of the top pitchers in the area. But then he began to feel some pain in his arm last month during a start against Cary-Grove.

He had a no-hitter going at the time.

“I was pitching in the fifth inning and I just started feeling a little something in my elbow, but I didn’t say anything because I really wanted the no-hitter,” Borucki said. “I hadn’t had any problems prior to that, so I just stretched it out more and more to get through the innings. But it never got better.

“I really don’t know when it happened. It’s not like there was one single pitch (to pin it on). Maybe it was the adrenaline of the no-hitter and maybe trying to get it was what did it.”

Or maybe not. Borucki may never know what caused the tear in his left elbow. All he knows is that he might never get over the disbelief or the hurt.

He took an MRI on Friday to determine the problem and was optimistic since the pain in his elbow wasn’t all that bad. But three days later, his world got turned upside down.

“I was in the car with my dad on Monday when he got the call from the doctor and when my dad said, ‘Are you serious?’ I knew what it was and I just put my head down and started crying,” Borucki said. “That was really tough.”

But Borucki seemed upbeat two days later on Wednesday after Mundelein’s 8-1 win over Lake Zurich. He did, after all, have a hand in the victory.

“After hearing on Monday that I couldn’t pitch anymore this season, I found out on Tuesday that I could still bat and play first base,” said Borucki, who will hold off on Tommy John surgery until the end of the season and will likely red-shirt at Iowa next year. “I would have liked rooting on my teammates (from the dugout), but I really like being on the field more and I was really excited to hear that I could still do that. That’s the way I’m going to play out my senior season.”

The Mustangs will take it.

They’ll miss Borucki’s presence on the mound, but they know he is much more than a pitcher.

“He’s still going to be a big part of what we’re trying to do here and that’s good news,” Mundelein coach Todd Parola said of Borucki. “He’s as good of a defensive first baseman as I’ve had, and really as I’ve seen. He’s as good as they get. He helps us defensively…and offensively, he puts the ball in play and has been real productive.”

Now, it’s up to the Mustangs to find some more production out of their pitching rotation to make up for Borucki’s absence. They’ll be looking to Jared Mandel, Matt Langlie, Bryan Wiener and Zack Pawlowski for a lift.

“Obviously, we’re not going to have that dominating guy anymore (on the mound),” Parola said. “I mean, Ryan can go out and single-handedly dominate a team. So we’ll have to have some other guys step up.”

Going overtime:

Lake Zurich played seven innings of baseball Wednesday at Mundelein.

But the Bears weren’t done when the last out was called.

In their 8-1 loss to Mundelein, the Bears made multiple mental errors that proved costly and head coach Gary Simon didn’t want to sit with those for the entire bus ride home. So in an effort to work the kinks out, he conducted a mini practice session with his players in Mundelein’s right field.

It lasted the entire time the Mundelein players and coaches went through their postgame field cleanup routine.

The Bears ran sprints, worked on their hitting stances, and did fielding drills.

“We’re on a three-game losing streak so Coach has had to go to something like this,” Lake Zurich right fielder Sean Eder said. “We always run after games, but this is a little more extreme. Coach thinks we need discipline.

“Yesterday (Tuesday), we lost a close 2-0 ball game to Mundelein and it was kind of like, ‘Come back tough and we’ll get them tomorrow.’ But when something like this happens, it’s enough to put someone over the edge. You can tell Coach was disappointed in us and it’s really not surprising that he resorted to something like this.”

Whether the Bears believe so or not, it’s the last thing Simon wanted to do after a rough game on a cold day.

“I should be home doing my taxes right now,” Simon said as he tried to muster a chuckle. “We don’t want to be doing this. But we hit a low today. It’s all mental toughness.”

Name change:

Maybe Libertyville’s nickname should be changed.

“Road Warriors” might suit the baseball players better.

“That’s what I’m calling us,” Libertyville coach Jim Schurr said. “We’ve been on the road a lot.”

To be precise, the Wildcats/Road Warriors have had exactly one home game in their first 12 games. They were at home Tuesday against Zion-Benton.

If that schedule wasn’t unfriendly enough, Libertyville is upside down in all of its nonconference games. Outside of their games in Arizona (Spring Break) and Miller Park, which are unavoidable road games, the Wildcats have 13 other nonconference games and 11 are on the road.

“I think what has happened with some of those games is that there has been bad weather in the past and we’ve had to host games against some teams that were supposed to be at their place, and now, we’ve got to go to their place this year,” Schurr said. “It’s created a huge imbalance in our schedule. You never want that kind of imbalance.

“I guess the good thing is that next year it will be just the opposite and we’ll have all those road games as home games.”

Book it:

If it gets quiet on the bus to a Libertyville baseball game, it doesn’t necessarily mean that every player is tethered to headphones and jamming to his MP3 player or iPod.

Believe it or not, the Wildcats might actually be reading.

Head coach Jim Schurr went into his bag of old tricks and dusted off one of his favorite books, “Mind Gym.” About six years ago, he had his players read the book, a chapter or two when they had the time, as a way to learn strategies for improving their mental toughness as athletes.

“I was going through my desk and realized it had been a while since I had the entire team read this book so I went out and got 30 copies and gave all the guys one,” Schurr said. “This is one of my favorite books. I haven’t seen a lot of books that appeal to me this much and that really help athletes as much as this one does.

“It’s a really easy read and we read a new chapter or so each week and it basically deals with the psychology of sports and gives advice on how to deal with the successes and failures of sports. It gives you different coping mechanisms, which I think is important.”

Not so bad weather:

Turns out that the bad weather that is typical of this area in the spring but has been largely absent this year is good for something.

Hitting.

Stevenson coach Paul Mazzuca says his team got off to a painfully slow start at the plate and he theorizes that one explanation could be a lack of time in the batting cages.

“When the weather is bad early in the season, which it usually is up here, you end up spending a lot of practice time inside,” Mazzuca said. “And because of a lack of space, you end up doing a lot in the batting cage. The plus side of that is that you really get a lot of reps in and that repetition is key for hitters.”

Because the weather has been relatively mild this spring, most teams have held a majority of their practices outside, which lends to situational and game-like practices rather than a concentration on hitting.

“That’s been the one negative to the great weather,” Mazzuca said. “You’re outside doing all that other stuff and I know for us, we really saw a lack of those reps in the cages in our first 10 games. We were very inconsistent offensively.”

The bats are finally beginning to heat up for the Patriots, who have won three of their first four division games over the last two weeks.

Seniors Adam Walton and Steve Galanopoulos are both hitting better than .350 and had multiple hits in wins over Zion-Benton and Warren.

“Some of our guys like Adam and Steve are starting to heat up,” Mazzuca said. “They’re stringing multiple hits together. We’ve been seeing some signs of some really good baseball.”

Waiting on the wins:

You’ve got to figure that the wins will come.

Grayslake North has a couple of pitchers in Tommy Elias and Andrew Cantor that barely give up any earned runs. Elias has a 1.19 ERA over 18 innings and Cantor has a 1.5 ERA over about the same number of innings.

Yet, Elias is 0-1 and Cantor is just 1-0.

“They’ve just had some tough luck,” Grayslake North coach Andy Strahan said. “I remember Tommy pitched four scoreless innings against Round Lake and we didn’t score while he was in there. We’ve just had some games where we’ve had a tough time getting any offense going.”

But Strahan is confident that if Elias and Cantor stay the course they’ll eventually be rewarded with some wins.

“Both of those kids are very good pitchers because they can throw multiple pitches for strikes,” Strahan said. “They make it really tough for hitters to look for a specific pitch in a specific spot.”