Karger's hit caps another Batavia thriller

Late-inning rallies, long relief stints, clutch 2-out hitting - no matter what the odds, Batavia's baseball team keeps finding ways to win.

After recording 3 consecutive come-from-behind victories, the Bulldogs (14-5, 9-1) scored another win in their final at-bat Tuesday afternoon.

Adam Karger's 2-out single drove in Jordan Coffey from second with the game-winning run to lift Batavia to a hard-fought, 3-2 Western Sun Conference triumph over visiting Kaneland (14-5, 6-4).

Karger, who doubled and scored a sixth-inning run to put the Bulldogs ahead 2-1, lined a 3-2 offering from Knights reliever Joe Gura over the head of third baseman Curtis Lubic into left field.

Left fielder Jay Levita made a strong throw to home on the play but Coffey slid across the plate just ahead of the tag of catcher Mike Pritchard, setting off another late-inning Bulldog celebration.

"I was pretty much looking fastball," said Karger. "He (Gura) missed with a changeup high the pitch before that so I was looking straight fastball."

Kaneland staged a 2-out comeback of its own in the top half of the seventh, as pinch-hitter Blake Kendrick singled and Jake Tickle walked before Jake Fiedler lashed an RBI single to tie the game at 2-2.

But it did little to rattle the Bulldogs.

"We know we can come back from anything," said Karger. "We have confidence in ourselves that we can come back. We're definitely not afraid to score runs with two outs. We know we can do it and we've proven that we can."

"I need you guys to save my aorta because the thing is going to explode pretty soon," Bulldogs coach Matt Holm said of his team's recent string of dramatic finishes. "I'd like to have a nice (easy) game but we've got to win games like this, too.

"Last year, we lost a lot of games at the end of the game like this. A huge part of it is having the relief pitching we've had. But I wasn't expecting the relief pitcher to go five innings (today)."

That pitcher was senior right-hander Chris Wood, who raised his record to 5-0 with 5 innings of 1-run relief after starting pitcher Brian Krolikowski was forced to leave the game with a strained hamstring after completing the second inning.

"All I wanted to do was hit my spots and keep the ball low," Wood said of his longest stint of the season. "It's a great feeling to keep winning but without the defense I'm nothing because I'm not a power pitcher."

Holm definitely is happy to have him ready and willing in the bullpen.

"What he's doing for us is absolutely incredible," the coach said of Wood, who tossed 4 innings of relief during Saturday's 8-5 win over Oswego.

Kaneland pushed across an unearned run in the first when Fiedler reached on an error and scored on Gura's RBI single. The Knights also received a solid mound effort from southpaw starter Jeff Smith, who allowed 2 runs on 6 hits through 5 2/3 innings.

"Smitty did a great job keeping that lineup at bay," said Kaneland coach Brian Aversa. "I give our guys credit for battling back and extending the game but we were one play away.

"It was a pretty good baseball game all the way around."

The 3-game series will resume today in Maple Park.