By Bobby Narang- Photos by Jenn-Anne Gledhill
**Additional Photos are Available for Purchase at https://justallsports.zenfolio.com/p319876540 **
CREST HILL – Saturday early morning games can be tough on youth baseball teams.
Add in a few other details, such as cold, wind and a long drive, it can often lead to some perplexing series of events.
The 13U Illinois Wolves had an early wake-up call on Saturday, May 3.
Unfortunately, for the Wolves, they hit the snooze button for a few innings in Saturday’s 8 a.m. game against a talented and energized GO PRO team.
GO PRO scored five runs in the top of the third inning to cruise to a 9-6 victory over the Illinois Wolves in the first game. The Wolves fell victim to a comedy of errors, miscues and mental lapses in the nearly two-hour game. The Wolves made several outfield gaffes, allowing fly balls to go over their heads and committed numerous baserunners mistakes, and a few costly errors to lose their third game of the season.
Illinois Wolves coach Brandin Muniz was frustrated discussing the blunders of the early morning game that added an “L” to his team’s record.
“For the life of me, I don’t understand it,” Muniz said. “Our guys have to show up and be ready to go. For whatever reason, we have certain guys ready to play and certain guys are letting the early morning games affect them –and it shows. We’re playing these early morning games in the cold weather, we have to have a few switches after this game.”
The Wolves did show some life in the first inning. The Wolves used three pitchers in the defeat, with left-hander Michael Petrbok starting the game. He gave two runs in the top of the first inning, but the Wolves responded with a four-spot to seize a 4-2 lead.
In the bottom of the first, Jackson Martin smashed an RBI single to left-field, Payton Swartzendruber drilled a deep RBI double to left-center and Matthew Wiskowski closed the scoring with an RBI double to leftfield.
Petrbok did a solid job in the second inning, allowing a leadoff double but shutting down the visiting team by retiring the final three batters, including a strikeout to end the threat.
After GO PRO chased Petrbok in the top of the third with five runs, the Wolves struggled over the next two innings, not scoring a run to fall into a 7-4 deficit. First baseman Christian Slazak kept the damage to a minimum by snagging a hard-hit grounder, then firing the ball at home plate to throw out the runner for the defensive gem of the game.
Down three runs, the Wolves mounted a comeback in the bottom of the fourth inning. Martin opened the inning with a bloop single to right field and immediately stole second base. One out later, Graham Johnson’s RBI single to left field sliced the deficit to 7-5. Swartzendruber delivered an RBI groundout to bring the Wolves to within one run at 7-6.
Slazak came on to pitch after Swartzendruber pitched one inning and two-thirds. The right-hander gave up two runs but came on strong by striking out two batters in the fifth.
“I was trying to locate my pitches because we needed to stop them and score a couple of runs,” Slazak said. “Our defense wasn’t the best, so we have to play better.”
Johnny Burke said the Wolves have to learn to play focused in early games.
“The first game, overall as a team, we didn’t play very well,” Burke said. “I also had a bad at-bat in my first time up. We were slow and we were out of it. We don’t play the best at 8 a.m. games, so we have to come out with something else to get us going. We should’ve won that game. We beat ourselves.”
Muniz said the loss served as a jolt to several players, leading to a few changes for the second game that day against Premier Navy.
“I think Christian did a good job coming in,” Muniz said. “I think our pitching overall didn’t do that bad in this game. There’s nothing you can do when you have that many errors and guys can’t read fly balls. There were a couple of baserunning mistakes that we need to clean up.
Fred Sackley said the Wolves can’t have a repeat of a loss due to a lack of focus for a morning game.
“We learned that good teams are going to be ready to play and will hit the ball,” Sackley said. “We have to play better. Our outfielders have to learn how to track the ball better. It was a frustrating game. We made a lot of mistakes and let too many people on base because of dropped popups.”
