Baseball: Lake Zurich rallies against Warren, then darkness suspends game
A smaller version of Boston Red Sox left-hander Chris Sale chucks pitches for Warren's baseball team. Blue Devils junior lefty Ryan Scanlon is his name, and the slender teen's style on a mound looks awfully similar to Sale's.
Lake Zurich's coaches and players noticed it before the start of a North Suburban Conference contest in chilly, cloudy Gurnee Thursday afternoon.
"We saw him warming up in their bullpen," said Bears baseball coach Rick Erickson, whose lineup is lefty-heavy. "Elbow out, with a slingshot delivery, he sure looked a lot like Sale from a distance."
What the scoreboard looked like after seven innings: Warren 4, Lake Zurich 4.
The game was called because of darkness after Lake Zurich had plated 4 runs - 3 on bases-loaded walks and 1 on a two-out strikeout/wild pitch with the bases loaded - in the bottom of the seventh inning. The wild pitch, with junior Anthony Mangano batting, allowed the Bears' second run to score.
LZ was the home team at Warren because its field was unplayable due to rain in previous days. The teams will resume the game at a date to be determined next week.
Scanlon (6 Ks, 2 BBs, 105 pitches), with his herky-jerky motion, appeared to be in line to extend Warren's astounding winning streak to 19 games in a game that featured exactly zero extra-base hits. He gave up only 2 hits through six innings before allowing one-out singles to junior Jack Pfeifer and senior Michael Chialdikas in the bottom of the seventh inning. Bears junior James Piggott greeted reliever Justin Vaughan with a single, loading the bags. Following a strikeout, junior Jack Moses notched an RBI via a walk, and senior catcher Tyler Snep drew another bases-packed walk to cut Warren's lead to 4-3.
Bears sophomore third baseman Sam Holtz entered the batter's box next. The counts he faced, in order: 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, 3-1, 3-2.
Ball four knotted it at 4.
Darkness preserved the soccer result.
Temporarily.
It also left Warren (21-2, 9-0 in the NSC) and Lake Zurich (13-7, 5-4) with the records they had before LZ senior starter Jake Green's first pitch.
"[Scanlon] deserved to win," said Blue Devils coach Clint Smothers, who received a pair of run-scoring singles - one down the third-base line, the other to right field - from junior catcher Thomas Kenney. "He threw the ball really well."
A Lake Zurich error led to Warren's third run, and junior Ryan Devries' well-placed safety squeeze upped the Blue Devils' lead to 4-0 in the third inning.
As the game unfolded, Erickson urged his boys of spring to alter their approach at the plate on an autumn-ish day.
"We had to tone it down a little bit, go for line drives or groundballs through the infield instead of swinging for the big hits," the Bears' boss said, adding his team had been averaging between 7 and 8 runs per game before it fell 2-1 to Warren in a road game Monday afternoon. "What [Pfeifer] did for us there in the seventh, to get us going with his single, was huge."
Holtz's glove at third base came up rather large several times, before his good eye at the plate forced the suspension of play.
An injury last spring marred most of his freshman season.
"We noticed, right away during tryouts indoors this spring, how great his hands are," Erickson noted. "Sam is quick, strong, smooth - especially smooth. Watching him play defense the way he does, you'd never think he's just a sophomore."