JASPER —
Chip Sweet was happy not to have to make the decision.
When Patrick Green gobbled up Jordan Yale’s high bouncer and gunned the ball to first base for the final out of the Class A Jasper Semistate high school baseball game Saturday afternoon, it not only finished Shakamak’s 8-5 win over South Central (Elizabeth), it also left Jason Boston — the potential winning run, had Yale beaten the throw to first — in the on-deck circle.
And every Shakamak fan at Alvin C. Ruxer Field was aware of that fact.
Shakamak never trailed Saturday in earning its fifth trip to Victory Field in nine years — and its third meeting there with Lafayette Central Catholic, as it turns out — but Boston and his Rebel teammates made things more than interesting after Sweet’s Laker team had threatened to run away with the game early.
With Shakamak leading 6-0 in the bottom of the third inning, Boston came up with Yale on first base and launched a towering two-run homer to left-center. Now it was a game instead of a runaway.
The Lakers answered with two runs of their own in the top of the fourth, rebuilding their six-run lead on RBI singles by Brock Dowell and Dylan Collins.
After two quick outs in the bottom of the fourth, a walk and a single brought Boston to the plate again. This time his towering drive went to right-center, not deep enough to leave the park but deep enough to force Dowell to make a tumbling, over-the-shoulder catch to end the inning.
“[The Rebels] hadn’t burnt me yet, so I thought I’d come in [shallower],” the Shakamak center fielder said later. “I was fortunate to get a good enough jump.”
Boston had gone to the mound for the Rebels to shut down Shakamak’s fourth-inning rally, and he held the Lakers in check the rest of the way — although the Lakers did leave the bases loaded in both the fourth and fifth. And in the bottom of the sixth, an error and a walk put two on with two out for Boston, who this time homered to straightaway left field — several feet out of reach of a leaping Luke Sweet — to cut the lead to three runs.
“He’s a player,” said Green of Boston afterward. “[The Rebels are] fighters, that’s all you can say.”
“They really battled,” Luke Sweet said of the Rebels. “They really came out to play after the first couple innings.”
“It never was [one-sided],” said Dowell. “It never felt easy. All the credit to them. They kept battling, and they had a chance at the end.”
After a scoreless first inning, the Lakers got on the board quickly in the top of the second. Brodie Crowe dropped a soft single over second base, Brett Yeryar doubled to the left-center gap and Luke Sweet yanked a two-run double down the left-field line. A single by Christian Burris and Robert Fowler’s fielder’s choice brought in Sweet for the third run against South Central ace left-hander Alex Wiseman.
“We practiced against [left-handed] curveballs all week,” said Luke Sweet, “and we really jumped on it today.”
Green, who had survived a leadoff single in the bottom of the first by retiring the next three South Central batters — including Boston, who hit a popup almost as impressive in its height as the two homers were in length — was appreciative of the lead.
“It was huge,” he said after the game. “[My teammates] have been doing that all year.”
South Central threatened immediately in the bottom of the second as a walk and a double by Matt Veith that fell just beyond Kyler Fulford’s dive in right field put runners at second and third with nobody out. Green retired the next two batters on a strikeout and a tap to the mound, issued another walk that loaded the bases, then slipped a called third strike past dangerous Austin Knear to end the inning.
Walks to Dowell and Collins opened the top of the third, and South Central coach Nick Tremain decided it wasn’t Wiseman’s day. Veith came to the mound to face Green.
“I knew he was coming in [with a pitch] to get ahead of me,” Green said after the game, “and he put it right in my wheelhouse.” The first-pitch result was a towering monster home run that came down somewhere in a small stand of trees beyond the flagpole just outside the center-field fence. Now it was 6-0.
“[Green’s] hit a few like that this year,” said Chip Sweet, who like most people in attendance said he never did see Green’s big fly come back to earth. “I was just watching the runners go around the bases … getting those runs with one swing was nice, and Luke got a big hit early that was really, really important. In a big game like this, you don’t want to have to play from behind.”
“You get to this stage, everybody’s nervous,” Green added.
Green had needed 80 pitches to get through the first four innings, so Yeryar relieved him and got a quick fifth inning thanks to the second line-drive double play in the game by the Lakers — both hit to Green by Mark O’Connor to double Spencer Ray off first base. After the three unearned runs in the sixth, however, coach Sweet made another move.
“In the sixth inning, when we came in to bat, coach asked me if I wanted to close it out,” said Dowell, who took the mound for the seventh. “I wanted the ball in my hand; I knew my teammates would make plays behind me, and they did.”
A hit and an error after Boston’s sixth-inning homer had threatened to turn the South Central batting over again, however; after Dowell got a popup on his first pitch, an infield hit by Jack Turner and a walk to No. 9 hitter Matt Fox put two runners on base, put the Rebels at the top of their order again, and brought the tying run to the plate.
Dowell struck out Knear on a full-count fastball on the outside corner. With Boston lurking, Dowell got two strikes on Yale, who then fouled off three straight pitches before grounding out — and all through that at-bat, the Shakamak coach was thinking.
“I told one of our coaches, if [Boston] comes up with the bases loaded, you might see something for the first time,” Chip Sweet said, referring to a bases-loaded intentional walk. “I wasn’t going to walk him,” the coach continued, “but having to pitch to him would not have been an easy thing to do.”
Sports
Related Photos
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Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza Flyin' to state: Shakamak's Luke Sweet (right) shows off his high jump skills as fellow teammate Kyler Fulford (left) tumbles head-over-heels on a pile of teammates after the Lakers defeated South Central in the Class A Jasper Semistate game Saturday.
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