[Preview of this week’s article in Inside-Booster.]
By Jack Lydon
“Something special is happening with @LTBaseball (19-4) this season.”
That was a tweet by Benjamin Wong, a Lane Tech baseball parent, lawyer and Lane’s LSC president after the Champions’ 8-0 victory over Stevenson.
Lane is having a special season indeed. After a rough start, the Champions have put together a string of nineteen straight wins, dominating every team in the Chicago Public League and chalking up nice wins against 4A powerhouses, Loyola Academy, Glenbrook North, Evanston, New Trier and Stevenson.
Their only losses came in the first five games of the season and that “was with a whole different lineup when we were still figuring things out,” in the words of Lane Tech head coach Sean Freeman.
Friday afternoon’s game was tied 1-1 after four and a half innings and looked like that string might come to an end at the hands of Northside rival Lincoln Park and their sophomore pitcher rising star Rio Francois.
It was clear early on that the Champions were experiencing something of a letdown after the long string of victories and the recent 8-0 shellacking of 4A powerhouse Stevenson. The Champions had four strikes looking—call third strikes. The which ended innings, very unusual for the normal aggressive Champion hitters.
“That is one thing I was not pleased with at all. Our lack of focus and energy today, that’s were that shows up,” Freeman admitted.
“I thought we played some good small ball. Rory Irwin laid down two great punts. Sometimes when it’s not your day, you’ve got to find a way to make it happen and he did that. Which is a huge help for our offense.”
It sounds bad but it really wasn’t. The Champions never really seemed in danger of losing. Lane’s pitchers Alex Delaney and Hunter Smith had things in hand. While they had base runners in the early innings, a big inning never materialized, nor did it even seemed like it would.
Tied 1-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning, Luke Kam walked and stole second. Rory Irwin cracked a sharp grounder to short which went right under the fielder’s glove scoring Kam from second. Paris Head then walked and later scored on Alex Ziegler’s single. The Champions manufactured two runs and would go on to win 4-1.
Very good teams find a way to win when they are emotionally down. Very good teams find a way to win when lesser teams find a way to lose.
Ben Wong and his tweet got it right. This is a good team, a special team. Ben Wong should know his Champions. He has had three sons play baseball at Lane for Sean Freeman. His middle son Ryan was a star pitcher for the Champions who later played baseball at Caltech and now works for the Chicago Cubs baseball operations group tracking player performance at all levels of Cubs teams. Baseball is quite scientific now, thanks, in part, to former Champions.
