The Minooka Indians baseball team were heading into their annual WJOL Tournament they participate in with seven other schools.
This tournament is special because it is a memorial for the late Don Ladas, while 1340 WJOL is a news/talk radio station located in Joliet.
“I’m always excited about the WJOL tournament, it is a great start to the year,” Minooka head coach Jeff Petrovic said.
In Minooka’s first match on April 2, they would take on the Plainfield Central Wildcats. In typical tournament fashion, if you keep winning, you will win the tournament championship.
The tournament this year was held at the Wintrust Crossroads Sports Complex in New Lenox. The complex was recently opened last year and is full of turf baseball fields for all ages.
Due to inclement weather the day before, every team was set for a doubleheader on Thursday.
The day of the doubleheader was also raining in the morning, luckily due to the field being turf, the boys were still able to get their game in.
The field had extreme wind blowing in from right field and the field they were on was elevated higher than any surrounding area.
The Indians were the first to get on the board during the 1 o’clock game with a junior Tyler Ebel sacrifice bunt to score senior Jason Duy in the second inning.
Head coach Petrovic ended up getting thrown out of the game by an umpire. Petrovic is not your typical coach who gets tossed often.
“Getting ejected from a game is never the plan,” Petrovic said. “But we have two good other coaches that were able to get the job done.”
Coach Wes Anderson took over at third base for Petrovic.
“Stepping in for Coach Petrovic required a mindset shift,” Coach Anderson said. “I had to consider how we would generate offense, not just limit the opponent. Fortunately, having worked alongside Coach Petrovic for several years, allowed me to make the shift quickly.”
For the Indians pitching, Anderson is the main guy to make the decisions for our pitching rotation.
After a scoreless third inning, the Plainfield Central Wildcats had a three-run inning in the top of the fourth. They then scored again in the top of the fifth.
Minooka was now down 4-1 going into the bottom of the 6th, they needed to make something happen fast.
The Wildcats brought in a new pitcher for the sixth and the Indians started picking away. Unfortunately not enough to tie it going into the final inning down 4-3.
Central, with a not-so-comfortable lead, tried to extend it as much as they could, collecting one more run going into the bottom of the seventh leading 5-3.
The Indians had only three more outs to make something happen for themselves.
They started the inning hot, they had two runners in scoring position with one out, and junior Howie Porath would come up to the plate, having two singles in the game already.
“I was looking to hit the ball opposite field due to the wind blowing in from right,” Porath said. “I saw that first pitch slider, and did exactly that.”
Porath found the pitch that he liked and smacked it opposite left field, he coasts into second base for a double as both of the runners score tying the game up at 5.
The boys in the dugout were cheering and doing everything they could to root on the guys. Subsequently, the Wildcats started to make error after error.
Senior Gavin McReynolds, now at third base, pinch running for Porath, is the winning run.
With bases loaded now, leadoff batter junior Landon Currie stepped up to the plate.
“When I got in the box, considering there were less than two outs I was only trying to put the ball in play,” Currie said. “When I realized the ball got through, I was super happy that we won. I had been working on hitting the ball opposite field.”
Currie smoked a ball past the first baseman, scoring McReynolds from third, and the Indians won in walk off fashion.
“I was really happy for the players,” Anderson said. “This group showed a lot of toughness in this game, it was a total team effort as we went through quite a bit of the lineup card to get there.”
Kooper Fisher is a member of the varsity baseball team.
