Area baseball teams looking to get season restarted

As the days dragged by, the frustration steadily built.

Baseball teams sat around for the better part of two straight weeks in April as a perpetually dark cloud saturated fields and brought stagnation to a season that was starting to hit its stride.

Two weeks worth of dismal weather finally left the area at the end of last week. Time will tell if any long-term damage has been done to teams that now must reboot their campaigns.

“For us it came at a real bad time,” said Downers Grove South coach Darren Orel. “Just when we were starting to get in a rhythm as a team, we got hit with all that rain. We’re still trying to get back in that rhythm.”

March and April typically find teams honing their talent and building toward a playoff run in May. That plan’s being revamped as everyone scrambles to play as much of their schedule as possible in a small window of opportunity.

The timing for pitchers and hitters has reverted back to levels seen at the start of the season in March. Defense has been generally atrocious because teams haven’t gotten much field time in recent weeks.

The rhythm of the game has vanished this spring, but teams will get a big opportunity to reclaim it in the next few weeks if the weather cooperates.

After playing one game in two weeks, Metea Valley is now playing major catchup. The Mustangs are in the midst of playing 16 games in 16 days, with two of their three days off being Sundays.

With a major push, it’s still possible for Metea Valley to get in the bulk of its scheduled games if the weather stays relatively dry between now and late May.

“We might be able to get all of our games in,” said Mustangs coach Craig Tomczak. “But we’ll have to play every day to do it.”

The Saturday before the Class 3A and 4A playoffs begin is typically a slow day. There’s a smattering of nonconference games as teams try to get some work in, but now May 21 has become a key makeup date for conference doubleheaders.

Handling pitching staffs is about to become much more tricky, as if it hasn’t already been an overwhelming concern.

“What’s going to happen in the next two weeks is that everybody is going so much deeper in their pitching rotation than they want to,” said Naperville Central coach Bill Seiple. “You’re going to have to swing the bat and defend in order to win.”

If one game summed up how dire the April weather became, it was last Thursday’s attempt by Lake Park and Neuqua Valley to play in Naperville.

Cold, windy and soggy from the start, a downpour in the bottom of the first inning sent a wicked chill into everyone in attendance — especially the shivering players. By the second inning the pitchers could hardly grasp the ball, which led to 9 walks and a hit batter.

By the bottom of the second inning, players couldn’t feel their hands. Some position players had to leave the game.

By the end of the second inning, puddles returned to the field and the officials decided to postpone the game. Perhaps out of mercy.

Would that game have even started if not for the two weeks of cancellations that preceded it? Probably not.

Out of desperation to get in a game, though, both teams boldly gave it a shot. They wound up completing the game on Saturday in a rare tripleheader.

Goofy as it sounds, it’s actually pretty fitting considering the weather we’ve endured the last month.

Forget about Botox. It might be time to consider Gore-Tex injections.

Let’s just hope May offers brighter skies.

“As the days settle in,” Seiple said, “I think you’ll see the games start looking like baseball games again.”

kschmit@dailyherald.com