Baseball: Palatine’s late scoring spree beats Wheeling

Palatine’s bats woke up just in time Thursday.

The Pirates, who pounded out 32 hits in their last three games, found themselves with just three after five innings at home against Wheeling. To matters even worse, Palatine trailed a spirited Wildcat team 6-1.

Then the eruption took place.

Palatine spurted its own lava with hits that turned into a 9-run sixth inning as the Pirates rallied for a 10-6 win over Wheeling.

“We trailed in Monday and Wednesday’s games,” said Palatine coach Brent Carroll, whose team beat Conant twice earlier this week.

“We are calling ourselves the ‘Cardiac kids’. It takes us a couple times at our at-bats and then all of a sudden they are on fire. We just made some small adjustments. We were getting under the ball early.”

Fresh off an impressive win over Buffalo Grove on Wednesday, Wheeling (10-6, 1-2) used that momentum to stun Palatine throughout most of the game.

The Wildcats used a pair of sacrifice flies to score single runs in the first and third innings to take a 2-0 lead.

Dylan Baloun’s sac fly in the first scored Grant Scheuerman, who had singled. Zach Neukrich’s fly out pushed Owen Zalewski, who also had singled, across for the first two runs.

Wheeling added a pair of runs in the fourth to pull ahead 4-0. Tyler Zangara walked and would later score on a wild pitch. Jose Rivera would drive in a run on the Wildcats’ third sac fly of the game as Collin Fitzgerald scored.

Palatine (15-4, 3-0), which had been stymied by Wheeling’s Luke Papaioannou through three innings, finally got to the sophomore as Toby Peterson belted a homer.

Wheeling came right back to hit the Pirates with another two runs in their next at-bat. Rivera had a two-run single to score both Baloun and Zangara, who both had reached on singles, as Wheeling took a 6-1 lead.

But the Pirate hit machine finally got started in the bottom of the sixth. It didn’t shut off until Palatine sent 14 batters to the plate and came away with a 10-6 lead.

It all started with a wind blown infield single by Peterson. Ian Sherman then singled and Jett Greiwe doubled both home to cut the lead to 6-3.

After an error, Ben Ratajczak tripled home two runs to make it 6-5. Ratajczak then scored on Peter Mulhern’s single and suddenly it was tied at 6-6.

After a walk, Peterson came up with two outs and delivered again. The Kentucky-commit hit a long drive down the left field line that just stayed fair as it sailed out of the park and the Pirates had a 9-6 lead.

“Coach (Alex) Miramontes said to stay inside the baseball and that’s exactly what I did,” Peterson said. “The team needed to get something started. It was an energy thing for sure. The chairs were out and we put them away and we got up on the fence.”

Palatine added an insurance run on an RBI single by Greiwe.

The Pirates then had to hold off Wheeling in the top of the inning as the Wildcats had two runners on base before a fly out ended the game.

“We were creating some havoc on the bases with some steals to keep them off guard,” said Carroll, whose team has now won 9 of its last 10.

“We knew this one wasn’t going to be an easy one. We knew it would be a dogfight. But it is good to come away with a win.”

It was a disappointing loss for Wheeling and coach Jason Wieder.

“This was unfortunate,” Wieder said. “We were executing so well until the sixth. We kind of gave them some momentum when we didn’t get a runner in from third in the top of the inning. Then their bats came alive. It didn’t help we gave them five outs. We swung it well today.”