Lake Zurich walks off against Barrington
Lake Zurich senior Mitch Tuthill, standing on third base in the bottom of the sixth inning Monday afternoon, looked up at classmate Mike Schnur’s flyball to shallow center.
The Bears trailed visiting Barrington 8-7 at the time, in a Class 4A Barrington regional play-in baseball game at Lake Zurich.
As the ball landed in leather in the outfield, Tuthill heard two words from head coach/third-base coach Gary Simon:
“Get going.”
Tuthill blasted off from the bag and slid, head-first, for the game-tying run.
“Coach said those words to me quietly, very quietly,” said Tuthill.
What followed, an inning later, was loud.
Very loud.
LZ junior Sean Eder, leading off the seventh inning, ripped a walk-off homer to center to clinch a thrilling 9-8 victory.
Sixteenth-seeded LZ (16-16, after a 4-12 start) travels to Barrington on Wednesday to face top-seeded Mundelein in a regional semifinal at 4:30 p.m.
Eder’s bat had made some serious noise against the Broncos in the second frame Monday afternoon. His 3-run homer cut the Broncos’ lead to 6-3.
“At no time did I think, ‘No chance,’ after we got so far behind,” Eder said after his third and fourth homers of the spring. “We’d been down like that before, and we’d come back.”
Seven of the Bears’ 9 runs Monday scored via the long ball. Pinch hitter Anthony Drago and right fielder Mark Dorfman also hit shots. Drago’s 2-run dinger in the sixth, after a Jacob LaRue walk, pared Barrington’s advantage to 8-6.
Dorfman (solo HR, in the third inning) also came up big in the field, nailing a tagging runner at home plate to complete an inning-ending double play in the top of the sixth.
“A good baseball game … a very good baseball game,” said Barrington coach Jim Hawrysko, whose 18th-seeded club finished 7-28. “Their home runs weren’t cheap; they would have been homers at our place. Lake Zurich had been playing well the past couple of weeks, and so had we.”
Broncos senior starter Greg Gerrard (5 Ks, 1 walk) threw 95 pitches in 5⅓ innings, allowing 10 of LZ’s 11 hits. But he got out of several jams — with his arm in two innings and with his glove in another. LZ loaded the bases, with one out, after Eder’s 3-run homer. Gerrard left them packed. In the fourth inning, he fielded a vicious one-hop comebacker cleanly and, against the next batter, snared a screamer near his left ankle.
In the bottom of the fifth, with one out and Bears on second and third base, Gerrard fanned two straight batters to preserve an 8-4 lead.
LZ survived a rough outing from senior starter Ben Gullo, who lasted only 1⅓ innings and gave up 5 earned runs. He struck out three and walked four.
“His nose was bleeding before the game,” Simon said. “Not a good sign.”
Senior Eddie Szarkowicz got the final two outs of the second inning, before classmate Parker Asmann pitched the final five frames for the victory. Asmann’s numbers: 2 earned runs, 7 hits, 6 strikeouts, 1 walk. Three of his Ks came in the seventh, with the final one stranding Broncos on first and second.
Barrington senior John O’Connell walked twice and hit a pair of run-scoring doubles; junior teammate Aaron Foley knocked in 2 runs with a second-inning double.
“We battled,” Simon said. “So many good things happened for us today after we got down. That run, scored by Tuthill, to tie it? Nobody else on our team would have scored on that fly.”
Tuthill, though, respectfully disagreed with his coach afterward.
“Did he say that?” the designated hitter said, with the front of his jersey caked in dirt. “Nah, that’s not true.”
“Our team has other fast guys.”