Nazareth’s Landon Thome has been around enough baseball to know that nothing is secure in the game until it is.

So when Thome lofted what appeared to be a somewhat innocuous fly ball to right field in the eighth inning of Wednesday afternoon’s ESCC rivalry battle with Benet, he knew he shouldn’t take for granted that it would be the third out of the inning.

So he ran it out.

And so did the lead runner. So when Thome’s fly ball wasn’t secured and popped free, Nazareth was able to escape with a 5-4 eight-inning victory largely because neither of those two Roadrunners took anything for granted.

“I wasn’t frustrated,” Thome said of the fly ball. “Just wanted to run it out as hard as I could just in case something like that happened.”

It was an unexpected ending to a game that went from pitcher’s duel to what appeared to be a somewhat comfortable Nazareth win, back to a nail biter and then finally ending on a play that didn’t seem to suit how well the game had been played until that point.

“That was just so unconventional. You hate to see a game end on a play like that for anybody’s sake,” Nazareth coach Lee Milano said. “But you can’t blow a 4-0 lead either, so I give them credit in coming back.”

Nazareth (19-7, 7-5) appeared to have the win in the bag after finally breaking through in its half of the fifth inning. Thome’s rocket shot one-out single finally got one of the two teams on the scoreboard and then Kamran Alikhan gave Nazareth what appeared to be all the breathing room they might need with a three-run double that stretched the Roadrunner lead to 4-0.

Benet (14-9, 6-6) also appeared to be missing big chances of its own in the fifth and sixth inning in an attempt to put some runs on the board. The Redwings left runners at second and third in the fifth and then left them loaded in the sixth after they finally had a chance to face someone other than Nazareth starter Jimmy O’Connor.

O’Connor was spectacular in his four-inning stint, which was limited by a strict pitch count after he had also pitched Saturday. O’Connor faced one batter over the minimum (Peter Pignatiello reached on a first-inning error) and at one point he struck out five consecutive batters.

Benet had a little more luck getting to Nazareth reliever Christian Drye over the next two innings, but once again couldn’t figure out how to push any runs across.

That all changed in the seventh inning. Still trailing 4-0, Benet loaded the bases with one out thanks to a walk, an infield hit and a hit batsmen. Carson Ebeling forced in a run by drawing a walk and then Pignatiello popped a two-run single to close the gap to 4-3.

Quinn Rooney then delivered a game-tying single before Nazareth was finally able to get back to its dugout to reclaim control.

They ran into a bit of a roadblock in that cause with Benet reliever Luke Crowder blazing through the Nazareth lineup to force extra innings with three straight overpowering strikeouts.

But Benet wasn’t able to push across a go-ahead run in the top of the eighth, and Crowder’s dominance still seemed to be in effect, but a leadoff single to Sean Stolfi kicked off the bottom of the eighth.

before Crowder mowed down the next two batters to give him five strikeouts before surrendering the soft fly ball that upended Benet’s hopes of sweeping the season series having beaten Nazareth 6-3 earlier in the week.

“We are young across the board,” Benet coach Scott Lawler said. “So it is one of those things where the highs are sometimes really high and the lows are really low. But one thing we know is our kids will battle and our kids will fight.

“We had some other opportunities to get some space and get the lead there and didn’t. But that’s baseball.”

https://www.shawlocal.com/the-herald-news/2026/03/07/benet-makes-key-plays-when-it-needs-to-in-topping-bolingbrook/