Baseball: Lengle, Huntley walk off Fremd in extra innings
Needing one good swing of the bat to cap a crazy comeback for Huntley and end a marathon of a baseball game, Joey Lengle swung.
Hard.
And missed.
“I was going up trying to win the game for my guys,” Lengle said. “First pitch, I got a little ahead of myself, gripped the bat too hard, swung out of my shoes a little bit. I just tried to calm down, take a deep breath and let it all work out.”
It did.
The lefty-swinging Lengle rallied from an 0-1 count, looking at four straight pitches out of the zone to draw a walk-off walk with two out in the bottom of the ninth inning and give Huntley an 8-7 win over visiting Fremd on Tuesday.
The Red Raiders (3-0-1) trailed 6-1 heading into the bottom of the fourth. Relievers Owen Borkowski, Rowan Parker and Travis Dudycha, who earned the win, held Fremd (2-2) to one run over the final five innings.
“I thought we did a good job of chipping back,” Huntley coach Andy Jakubowski said after his team avenged last year’s loss to his alma mater. “I thought our guys who came out of the pen did a really nice job to give our offense a chance to come back. We were able to capitalize on a couple of mistakes by them and got some key, big hits.”
Fremd committed seven errors, including two in Huntley’s two-run seventh, which forced extra innings. Huntley’s winning rally in the ninth started with Kyle Ziebell (1 for 4) reached on a throwing error.
“We had every opportunity to win that game,” said Vikings third baseman Will Graba, who went 2 for 3 with an RBI single that started the scoring in the first inning. “Things just didn’t go our way, and sometimes that’s baseball. There were a lot of chances that we didn’t come through on and didn’t convert.”
Fremd starter Myles Minier pitched 5⅓ innings, allowing four runs, only one of which was earned. The lefty struck out two, walked one and gave up five hits.
“You score seven runs, you expect to win the game,” Fremd coach Chris Piggott said. “I thought we pitched pretty well. It’s hard to win against a really good team when you are giving them that many extra at-bats.”
Huntley right fielder Ian Kelly helped give his team a chance to win it by making a heads-up defensive play in the top of the ninth.
With a runner on first base and one out, Fremd’s Charlie Kalitowski hit a line drive into right field for an apparent single. Kelly alertly threw to second base and got the force out, keeping the go-ahead out of scoring position.
“That was a big-time play by Ian,” Jakubowski said.
In the Huntley ninth, after Kelly’s sacrifice bunt moved Ziebell to second base, Fremd intentionally walked leadoff hitter Ashton Jones (2 for 3, RBI single). Ziebell tagged up and sped to third on Aiden Eickelman’s fly out to center field.
Piggott then intentionally walked Brady Klepfer to load the bases and bring up Lengle, who had gone 1 for 3 with a walk in his first four at-bats.
His patience at the plate against righty Jackson Gallagher capped a three-hour, 25-minute game and gave his team an early-season, pick-me-up win.
“It just shows how much pride and how much heart we have to win games,” said Lengle, a junior third baseman and varsity rookie. “We just got to dig and get that little extra thing to tip the scale in our favor.”
Drew Borkowski was 2 for 3 with an RBI single and a run-scoring double for Huntley.
Santino Iacullo (3 for 4, double, RBI) and Graba (2 for 3) led Fremd’s offensive attack. MJ Castelloni and Iacullo had RBI singles in the fourth to extend the Vikings’ lead to 6-1.
The left-hitting Graba walked twice, and the only time he made an out was on a hard-hit ball to right field.
“I felt good with my swing,” said Graba, who’s a Harper College commit. “I’ve been scuffling a little bit. This game I just focused on hitting the ball hard, trying to hit line drives, and it worked.”