Baseball: Lockport pulls another win out of the fire

LOCKPORT – When Lincoln-Way East turned a botched rundown into two runs in the top of the fifth inning during its matchup against Lockport on Tuesday, it looked like it could be a decisive blow in a low-scoring SouthWest Suburban Conference game.

And that might have been true if the Porters were just an ordinary opponent, but there’s very little that’s ordinary about this Lockport team that scrapped its way back to claim a 5-4 victory.

“One of the beauties about the game of baseball is that you are going to see something every day that you thought could never happen, and that’s maybe one of them,” Lockport coach Scott Malinowski said. “And we can do better defending that situation, but we just compete, we just battle. These guys, time and time again, whether or not at the end of the game it means a W or an L, they are just going to keep fighting. We just do not stop competing.”

After the bizarre rundown play appeared to put the Griffins in the driver’s seat with a 4-2 lead, Lockport (15-1, 1-0 SouthWest Suburban Blue) quietly got one run back on an RBI double from Matt Merk. Merk collected three hits and three RBIs on the day and is one of multiple offensive pieces in the Lockport lineup capable of delivering whenever the need arises.

“We’ve been clicking all season,” Merk said. “But I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been down, maybe in the past we would have let that get us down, but we always find a way now. That’s just who we are.”

Merk’s double closed the gap to 4-3 and Lockport showed the diversity of its offense in its half of the sixth to claim the lead. Lockport’s No. 8 hitter Jacob Schindler pulverized a pitch that landed well behind the left field fence for a home run to tie the score at 4.

Then the Porters went in a different direction to engineer the go-ahead run. Giovani Zaragoza started off by laying down a bunt single. In its haste to defend the play, Lincoln-Way East (10-4, 0-1) threw the ball away and Zaragoza sprinted all the way to third on the miscue. Against a drawn in infield, Joey Manzo lashed a ball between first in second to score Zaragoza and give the Porters the lead.

“I think we’re pretty complete offensively,” Malinowski said. “We do a lot of little things. Its not like we’re just a bunch of boppers waiting for the three-run homers. And we can do that at times, but at the same time, that’s something we’ve stressed from the beginning, because like today for the most part the middle of the order didn’t do that much. Different guys stepped up at different times and did the little things that we needed to get the W.”

Lincoln-Way East started the game with a flourish as Alex Stanwich hit a solo home run in the first inning. It turned out to be the start of an eventful day for the Tennessee commit.

After singling to lead of the third inning, Stanwich moved around the bases until he attempted to steal home with two outs. He was called out on a close play, but it didn’t end his adventures on the base paths.

With one out in the fifth, after Josh Safarik was hit by a pitch and Tyler Bell coaxed a walk, Stanwich loaded the bases after he was also hit with a pitch. After a strikeout for the second out of the inning, Stanwich drew a pickoff throw from Lockport after wandering far from the first base bag. Caught in a rundown, Stanwich kept himself alive long enough to lead to indecisiveness from the Lockport defense in regards to lead runner. In the chaos, not only the lead runner scored, but the trail runner did as well and somehow Stanwich avoided being tagged out and ended up at second base.

A strikeout ended the rally moments later but East had scored two runs without the benefit of a hit.