Baseball: Carmel turns out the lights on St. Viator
At least the game finished this time.
Although, there was barely any time to spare.
The Carmel and St. Viator baseball teams have been going the distance, and then some, over the last two days in their East Suburban Catholic Conference baseball series against each other.
On Monday in Arlington Heights, the teams were tied in the eighth inning when their game was suspended due to darkness.
On Tuesday in Mundelein, their game didn't move much faster. But after 2 ½ hours and just before the sun went down, the final out was made in Carmel's 8-3 win over visiting St. Viator.
The two teams are still looking for a day to finish their Monday game so that they can wrap up their series.
"We were going to try to finish Monday's game first today, but we figured with the way things were going, we might not get today's game in," Carmel coach Bill Taylor said with a laugh. "We don't work that fast. Not as fast as I'd like, but I'm a pitching guy. I'd like all the games to go quick."
This game took some time because Carmel got to St. Viator's pitching with its bats and strung together a big fourth inning. It ended up being the difference in the game.
The Corsairs, who improve to 5-1-2 on the season, batted nine players in the long fourth inning and scored 4 runs on 5 hits.
Jake Adams, Lukas Galdoni, Kyle Grawe, Grant Cutting and Ryne Meriel all had singles in the inning for Carmel while Adams drove in 2 runs.
On the day, Galdoni had 3 hits, while Adams, Grawe and Cutting each had 2 hits.
"That four-run inning was big," Taylor said. "And it always makes it a little easier on your pitchers when you have that cushion."
Then again, Carmel starting pitcher Dylan Paquette was clipping along just fine on his own.
He gave up 8 hits but kept St. Viator at arm's length. The Lions' only significant inning was the third, which yielded 2 runs and 3 hits.
"It's all about battling, mixing in different pitches and different counts," said Paquette, who got his first victory of the season to move to 1-1 on the mound. "They've got a lot of great hitters so it's always nice to try to attack them, and first-pitch strikes were huge today."
Paquette completed six innings and was going for the complete game but was pulled after St. Viator's first two batters in the top of the seventh reached on an error and hit by a pitch.
Paquette finished with 3 strikeouts on the day.
Nolan Taylor, Bill Taylor's son and a sidearm pitcher, came in to finish out the seventh and get the save.
Before that, the Corsairs got some impressive insurance runs on back-to-back home runs in the bottom of the sixth by Galdoni and Wiegman.
"They obviously made a lot more plays today than we did today," said St. Viator coach Mike Manno, whose team falls to 8-2 overall and 0-1 in the ESCC. "Our mistakes also caught up with us, too. They capitalized on our mistakes. And they always have good pitching. He (Paquette) did a good job of keeping us off-balance."
St. Viator designated hitter Jack Mahoney had the most success against Paquette with back-to-back doubles in his first two at-bats.
Eric Adams also had a double and Casey Kmet drove in 2 runs for the Lions.
"I felt pretty good and pretty confident. I actually didn't have a very good day at the plate yesterday, so I just tried to wipe that out," Mahoney said. "By the third inning, I thought we all did a better job of adjusting to their pitching. We just couldn't execute with runners in scoring position today."